Latest / Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say / Setting Truthful Goals for Business Growth with Doug Brown

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Setting Truthful Goals for Business Growth with Doug Brown · Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say

• 0:00
  Welcome to another episode of 6 Figure Secrets for Fractional
• 0:04
  Experts. My name is Bradley Jacobs.
• 0:06
  I'm your host, the founder and CEO of Mylance.
• 0:09
  Today on the show, we have Doug Brown.
• 0:12
  Doug is the CEO of Sales Strategies and a renowned sales
• 0:16
  and revenue profit growth expert.
• 0:19
  He's founded or built more than 35 businesses and generating
• 0:24
  $960 million in sales and climbing.
• 0:27
  Doug, welcome to the show. Hey, Bradley.
• 0:29
  Thank you. Thanks for having me, I'm so
• 0:30
  grateful. Yeah, absolutely.
• 0:33
  So you talked about predictable revenue, right?
• 0:36
  Like that's your key focus. What does that mean?
• 0:40
  That means that you can predictably with pinpoint
• 0:44
  accuracy in, in many cases, say I'm here today and in X amount
• 0:49
  of time, I want to be here revenue wise even on
• 0:52
  profitability and I have a very high percentage of achieving
• 0:57
  that. And so, you know, because too
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  many people Bradley having like up months down months, up months
• 1:03
  down months, you know, or feast of famine cycles.
• 1:06
  And it's not really necessary. It's just that most people are
• 1:10
  just running on that transactional value versus, you
• 1:13
  know, selling versus a predictable model.
• 1:16
  Yeah, so feast of famine, it's like one of the most common
• 1:19
  phrases in the fractional world because most of them get their
• 1:23
  clients through referrals, word of mouth.
• 1:26
  It just kind of falls in their lap and it works for a little
• 1:29
  bit and then all of a sudden it stops and there's this famine
• 1:32
  cycle, right? Could be a month, two months,
• 1:33
  three months, six months. What is the biggest difference
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  between someone's who who's running their business where
• 1:39
  they have predictable revenue, and the person who's running
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  their business and they're in complete feast or famine?
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  So the major difference is exactly what you said.
• 1:47
  So they're relying on one or one or maybe 2 methods to, to get
• 1:52
  business. And the master prospector will
• 1:55
  always outsell the master closer.
• 1:58
  And so if if somebody takes that to heart, the master prospector
• 2:03
  is always prospecting. And so not only is the master
• 2:06
  prospector always prospecting, they're doing and looking for
• 2:10
  high performing activities which will bring in clients.
• 2:14
  So what we train people on and teach people is let's create 6
• 2:18
  new high performing activities over the next 6 to 12 months in
• 2:22
  your business. Then how do you automate those
• 2:25
  activities as much as possible? Because, you know, as a
• 2:29
  fractional or somebody working as a solo, traditionally what
• 2:33
  happens is they get, they get a client, then they're so focused
• 2:36
  on settling the, the, the engagement with the client or
• 2:41
  clients that they kind of forget about doing the prospecting.
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  And that's one of the reasons that, you know, it's like a wave
• 2:48
  coming in from a, a lake or an ocean.
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  You know, you'll see them come in in a rhythm, but when the
• 2:54
  wind blows a little stronger, they come in faster and a little
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  higher, right. And, and when the wind's not
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  blowing, it's a calm and too many calm spots for the
• 3:04
  independence. So to solve that, it's really
• 3:07
  about consistent prospecting. But people really don't have a
• 3:10
  system around that. So that's why they don't do it.
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  Yeah. So, you know, the number one
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  challenge with fractionals is, as you said, they're servicing
• 3:18
  clients, they're busy, they're one person.
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  How can they really think about this from a standpoint of you
• 3:24
  said they should always be prospecting, but I'm, hey, I got
• 3:27
  to be servicing my clients. Like how do I think about this?
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  Firstly, you know you can extend through referrals, so that that
• 3:34
  is a good thing, right? So always be prospecting, but
• 3:37
  always be building a relationship.
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  So, you know, follow up, people don't think of this as a, as a
• 3:43
  prospecting activity, but really when it comes down to it, it can
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  be. So while we're working through,
• 3:49
  instead of just trying to get the one transactional sale, we
• 3:53
  want to think about how are we actually extending the
• 3:55
  relationship not only, you know, one time, but multiple times.
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  So a lot of times people get referrals as one of their
• 4:05
  methodologies as a solo, but they're really doing what I call
• 4:09
  a passive referral program. So it's like they ask whenever
• 4:13
  people do, you know, they do a good job, somebody mentions it
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  and it's kind of there. But what if we had a very well
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  structured referral program where it's active?
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  So that right in the, you know, in our marketing we're we're,
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  we're talking about it in the prospecting process, we're
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  talking about it as we're making the engagement.
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  You know, we're talking about it as we're going along.
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  We're talking about it right in, in every single structured step
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  that we looked at where it's happening automatically.
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  Well, then we would get more referrals out of the process
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  without being pushy because it's not like we're trying to be
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  pushy. So that's one example of how to
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  take a high performing activity if it's working and making it
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  more automated, right? And you could do this through
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  technology. We built a, a SAS personalized
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  meaningful follow up system, right?
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  That's automated. So what they've got to
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  understand is, and I know this because I was a solo for a long
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  period of time, right? As we've got to schedule time
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  just like we're doing scheduling time for client activities and
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  people go, well, I can't do that, of course you can.
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  And if people really want predictable income out of just
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  this one concept, we'll go. We can talk about metrics
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  because those are my favorite if you'd like to.
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  But when we're doing this consistently, we will have
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  consistent lead flow coming in. Now, the more we dial in an
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  ideal right fit buyer profiles and our messaging, we're going
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  to have not just leads, but we'll have more sales qualified
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  or sales ready or even purchase order ready leads if we do it
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  the right way. So, but we're having a continuum
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  of that happening and that's where people drop the ball.
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  So it's like, look, if you if you spent an hour or two hours a
• 6:00
  day in your schedule and and people I can hear rolling their
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  eyes, I can't do that, right? Yes, you can.
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  You know, you just got to work around that.
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  If that became the first priority in your business, then
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  you would work around that just as if you had a small child.
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  You're not going to let the small child like, you know, I
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  mean, let's say they're they're six months old, they're not
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  going to get up and bathe themselves and feed themselves
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  and whatever. We would take care of that
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  child. Our business is the same way.
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  We've got to do that every day for the business and the
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  business then will return us consistently.
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  Maybe not predictability yet, because then we got to put math
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  to it, but we certainly would have consistency.
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  I mean, I couldn't agree with you more, right?
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  It's like you can make the time you're choosing not to, but you
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  can. What do you think is the number
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  one reason why fractional consultants are not making time
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  for sales? They really have untruthful
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  goals that they're not willing to commit to the truthful goal.
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  So in other words, a lot of times, and I know this because
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  I've, I've worked with fractionals and I worked with
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  solo people, you know, for over 30 years.
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  And you ask them straight out, what do you want to make this
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  year? And they'll tell you a number.
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  And then my next question is, well, OK, so what's your plan to
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  get there? Well, I think this, this, this
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  and this sounds like a lot of work, right?
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  Yeah. Tell you what if you could work
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  half as many hours and make 1/3 that amount of money, would you
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  want to do that? Absolutely, right.
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  That's it's like it's almost universal.
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  Now let's say the 8020 rule applies there, right?
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  So 20% say no, 80% say yes. It's not a truthful goal.
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  It's a, it's a goal they want. It's the aspiration which they'd
• 7:53
  like to have, but they're not committed to it because then
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  when you start to break down what it gets to get there,
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  there's a there's a gal, her name's Janet, and she was a
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  marketing and sales consultant. And I asked her what her
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  truthful goal was and she said $600,000 a year.
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  I said, well, you, you're doing a lot of coaching.
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  She said yes. And I said, is that a truthful
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  goal? She said yes.
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  And I say, well, OK, what are you charging per month?
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  She said, well, like I get $1000 a month recurring and I say,
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  well, Janet, you're going to have to have 50 clients a month
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  in order to hit your 6600 thousand dollar goal.
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  And she goes ho, no, I don't want to do that.
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  I'm like, that's the math, right?
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  That's what's going to take at this at this model.
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  And so I said, is this really a truthful goal or what would be
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  the bottom line? And she said 350 would be really
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  good. So we constructed a plan for her
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  to do the 3:50. See 600 wasn't the goal, 350 was
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  now. So we constructed a goal and she
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  was hitting that goal on 8 clients a year, right?
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  So that that's the first number one mistake.
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  The second one is they don't figure in the math, in the math,
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  meaning they don't figure in things like expense of sale,
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  churn of sale, refunds, even inflationary numbers, they don't
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  figure it in. So if they wanted a $350,000
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  goal, let's just say it took, I don't know, 10 clients to get
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  there, but their, you know, their overhead was 20%.
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  I'm making all this up, which would be low in some cases.
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  Then they need 12 clients. So they're two clients short so
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  they don't hit their numbers. So we got to figure out the math
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  on the front end. I think that's the number one
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  mistake and making sure it's a truthful goal.
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  Yeah. Is there a component?
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  Because this is one thing I see is that they they like serving
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  their clients. They're good at serving, serving
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  their clients. They don't like sales, they're
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  not good at sales. They don't enjoy it.
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  So they don't really do it. Well, any of us who've ever been
• 10:11
  married and have children, there's going to be lots of
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  things you don't like in that too.
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  But if you want a successful marriage or successful children,
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  you got to do what's got to be done.
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  You know, I would agree with you.
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  But then my first question would be to them is what business are
• 10:26
  you in? And I just, I just did this in a
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  live event. They asked me to speak.
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  So I was there and I said, OK, everybody tell me what business
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  you're in. And I went around the room and
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  there were different businesses in the audience. 1 was like,
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  yeah, we're we sell heating and air conditioning.
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  You know, we're an air, we're an HVAC company.
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  Another one. I'm a consultant.
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  And what do you consult in? And it was like, I don't know,
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  printing services or whatever they said, right.
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  And then another one, you know what?
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  We're, we're, we're, we're, we're a marketing company and we
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  serve, you know, XYZ clients. And then I asked everybody,
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  after going through about maybe 7 or 8 of them, I said what
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  business are you really in? Sales.
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  And they all were like puzzled and I, you know.
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  And so I said to him, I said, look, you're a marketing company
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  that delivers marketing and product services.
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  You're a consultant that handles printing consulting services or,
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  right? And we went through the whole
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  group and I said, how can you deliver those products or
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  services if you don't acquire a client first, right?
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  So you're talking about sales, it's the same thing.
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  So I said the real business we're all in, in this room is
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  client acquisition. And you want to know who
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  understands client acquisition better than most companies on
• 11:43
  this planet. Make a wish.
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  They're not make a wish because they're just mission driven.
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  I know they, I worked with them. So I, I understand some of their
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  model. They are a very strong company
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  who is focused on client acquisition of funds so that
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  they can bring those funds in to serve the mission.
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  And so if we're a solo person, we must understand that we're in
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  the business with client acquisition.
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  And if we don't want to be in that business, then get the heck
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  out of what you're in, because you're not going to be as
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  successful in it as you want to be because you're playing, you
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  know, you're trying to play hockey by the rules of European
• 12:27
  football, soccer, if you will, right?
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  They're similar. But nobody's getting crushed up
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  against the boards in European soccer, right?
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  So it's, it's, it's a, it's a different game, but the game
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  we're in, you and I and everyone else listening to this, we're in
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  client acquisition and we have a delivery of product or service
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  which we usually call. That's what we do right at.
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  The end of the day, I mean, what are you and I doing here right
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  now on this podcast, right. At the end of the day, we're
• 12:54
  adding value. And that's a great way to, you
• 12:57
  know, nurture and build trust and all that.
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  But we're, we're growing the awareness of what we do so that
• 13:02
  we can acquire more clients, right?
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  Like that's what we're here for. I don't need to sugar coat it or
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  hide it. It's just true.
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  I, I like you as a person, but I want to do the same thing,
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  right? And it's, it's so and, and
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  that's, you know, again, this is part of the marketing or, you
• 13:20
  know, prospecting and getting out in the public square.
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  Some people call this PR Whatever, whatever, it's, it's,
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  it's, it's exposure. We've got to get exposure to, to
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  get conversations going. So yes, that's exactly why we're
• 13:35
  here. We're doing client acquisition,
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  right. So one of the techniques you
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  talked about or one of the activities you said high
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  performing activities, I love the concept of an active versus
• 13:45
  passive referral program, right? Where passive I just let things
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  fall in my lap. Active, I have a structure
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  around it, right? It's part of my process, is part
• 13:54
  of my system. I'm asking for referrals that
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  are regular cadence. I'm probably checking in with my
• 13:59
  performance before I ask for referral.
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  Like how am I doing? Do you let you know?
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  I used to have my clients fill out a form.
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  So what are maybe two or three other activities outside of the
• 14:12
  active referral program that you would recommend for fractionals?
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  Well, what we're doing right now speaking as is there, right?
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  And there's a myriad of different ways you can speak.
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  So podcast or one of them, stage work is another way, you know,
• 14:30
  And a lot of people, I don't know how to speak.
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  Listen, you don't have to get up and talk about your product or
• 14:34
  service. Talk about a problem somebody's
• 14:37
  having in life or in the audience, right?
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  I'm trying to remember. Jeffrey Gitimer is an old sales
• 14:44
  trainer but wrote a book called The Little Red Book of Sales.
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  His first talk was not on sales. It was something I think like
• 14:53
  what he learned from his children today or something like
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  that. You know, the life's lessons he
• 14:57
  learned from children today. So, you know, we all have issues
• 15:01
  going on in life. You, you know, you can get up
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  and talk about the economy and the inflation and the fact that
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  right now the average person who's trying to retire, you
• 15:10
  know, runs out of money between 8 and 12 years after retirement.
• 15:16
  And you could talk about that just from a perspective of
• 15:19
  you're not trying to sell financial services, you're not
• 15:21
  trying to do any of that. You know, I'm a, I'm a revenue
• 15:25
  growth consultant and I'm concerned about what's going on
• 15:27
  in the world and how it's going to affect businesses and how
• 15:30
  it's going to affect the, you know, the, the kids coming up,
• 15:32
  right? Because now they're going to be
• 15:34
  more dependent to pay for their parents and, you know, and their
• 15:37
  grandparents as they go along, as they age, right?
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  It doesn't really matter. We got to get ourselves out
• 15:43
  there and position ourselves as an expert.
• 15:44
  So speaking is one of those things.
• 15:46
  What I, what I recommend is what people do is they sit down and
• 15:49
  they write out SSSML, right? So 4, I'm sorry, SSSSML.
• 15:58
  So there's four s s and those are short, short, short, short,
• 16:01
  medium, long. And the reason that I thought I,
• 16:05
  I have them do that is because we want a response in a client
• 16:10
  within 30 days. So what are the things that we
• 16:13
  can do for direct response? So I'll cold call.
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  Not a lot of people like to, but I'm OK with it, right?
• 16:22
  I'll reach out directly from say, a LinkedIn, right, to drive
• 16:28
  it to a conversation. These are all short term things
• 16:31
  that people can do. Networking can be a short term
• 16:35
  thing, you know, and if people don't know where to speak or
• 16:38
  where to network, just go to all the local Chamber of Commerce's
• 16:41
  around. They're always going to let you
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  in. There's people there to talk to,
• 16:43
  right. And so you know, now what would
• 16:47
  be a medium one maybe writing, right?
• 16:50
  So publishing, you know, writing for someone else's blog,
• 16:57
  something like that. You get in front of people, but
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  it's usually not a you know what's a long running your own
• 17:04
  podcast, right, Starting A blog, social media, you know, for for
• 17:12
  branding purposes, building out an agency program or referral.
• 17:18
  Not you know, where people you're making relationships with
• 17:21
  people to bring you incoming business, not just on referrals,
• 17:25
  but they're they necessarily may be competitors or they may not
• 17:29
  be competitors, but you have like minded interest in business
• 17:32
  to bring things together. There's a whole host of things
• 17:35
  you can do for this, but always start with the shorts because
• 17:41
  that's the mistake that people make, Bradley.
• 17:42
  They try to go to the longs and it takes them six months to get
• 17:46
  this thing going. So their runway, they run out of
• 17:49
  money on the runway and that's usually what the big challenge
• 17:53
  is. So let's talk about metrics
• 17:55
  because I know you said you love metrics.
• 17:57
  So let's go to your wheelhouse. Let's just say our average
• 18:01
  client has two to three. Our customer has two to three
• 18:06
  clients at any given time. Yeah, let's just say 10 KA month
• 18:10
  retainer. So they're making between 20 and
• 18:11
  30 KA month and the average length of that contract is 3 to
• 18:17
  6 months. OK.
• 18:20
  So you know I need a new client every quarter or so.
• 18:24
  Yeah. Something like that, right?
• 18:27
  Yeah. What do I need to be seeing from
• 18:30
  a metric standpoint? As far as you know, as you said,
• 18:35
  always be prospecting. So let's break it down.
• 18:38
  Like if I'm a fractional, I'm in the situation like what do I,
• 18:40
  what do I need to be seeing? Number of reach outs that we're
• 18:44
  doing, number of connections we're making, number of
• 18:50
  responses we're getting from those reach outs and
• 18:52
  connections, number of appointments that we're setting,
• 18:57
  number of close sales that we're getting from these appointments,
• 19:01
  number of follow up close sales that we're getting from these
• 19:04
  appointments. What transactional value we sold
• 19:08
  at and have we sold a larger transactional value?
• 19:12
  And I think the next metric I would measure would be what's
• 19:15
  the buying frequency? Are they buying for me once,
• 19:18
  twice, 3 * 4 times? So in that scenario, those are
• 19:22
  the metrics I would measure. So why?
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  Well, if you're not making enough reach outs, you're going
• 19:29
  to know right out of the gate, right?
• 19:31
  But if we're making reach outs and we're getting a very low
• 19:34
  connection rate. Now, some people might say this
• 19:37
  is a harder one to measure. And I would agree.
• 19:39
  If you can't measure your connection rate, measure the
• 19:42
  response rates. You can do that.
• 19:44
  I, I have tried 100 times with this and I got 30 responses.
• 19:51
  Look at your responses and go with a positive, negative or
• 19:55
  neutral. Now if they're all positive, woo
• 19:58
  Hoo, we're doing a good job, right?
• 20:00
  If they're all like, go away, you stink, I don't need your
• 20:04
  product, I don't need, well, guess what, your messaging and
• 20:06
  your value proposition's off. So when you're measuring these
• 20:09
  metrics, you can, it tells you a story, but you look at the
• 20:13
  metrics from one to the other. If we got a lot of reach outs,
• 20:17
  we're not getting favorable responses.
• 20:19
  We're probably either not talking to the right fit buyer
• 20:22
  or we have our incorrect messaging value proposition
• 20:25
  going on. Now, if we get, let's say 30
• 20:29
  responses that are positive and we have 20 appointments that set
• 20:36
  out of there, there's 2/3 a ratio, you're probably doing OK,
• 20:41
  But let's say you get 30 positive responses, but nobody's
• 20:44
  setting an appointment. There's a challenge within that
• 20:46
  metric somewhere of where we're going.
• 20:49
  So all we're doing is measuring these metrics.
• 20:51
  Now, you can break down these metrics as fine as you want to
• 20:54
  break them down. You could break them down a
• 20:55
  positive, negative, you know, neutral.
• 20:58
  You can break them down as appointment set, appointments
• 21:00
  capped, appointments abandoned, right?
• 21:02
  All of these minor metrics actually will tell you a story.
• 21:06
  And when you look at these metrics, it's going to tell you
• 21:10
  what to do or what not to do. And these metrics will compound
• 21:14
  on one another, which is really great.
• 21:16
  So once you've got these things rolling along and you're
• 21:19
  measuring them on a consistent basis, you could say, you know
• 21:21
  what, my close rate's a little bit lower than I want it to be.
• 21:24
  Let me figure out why that's the case.
• 21:27
  And maybe now we need sales conversational training or
• 21:31
  whatever it might be, right? Or maybe we're invoking.
• 21:36
  I'll give somebody a real life thing.
• 21:37
  Some some people. I was at one time, I was the
• 21:41
  president of sales and training for a man named Chet Holmes who
• 21:44
  wrote a book called The Ultimate Sales Machine.
• 21:46
  And when they hired me, I looked at all the metrics and I found
• 21:51
  they had a 15. I think it was 15 point.
• 21:54
  Yeah, 3% refund rate on the front end of their machine.
• 21:59
  And Chet was coming to me and saying, hey, we're like 27%
• 22:03
  underwater on the front end of the machine.
• 22:05
  And I'm like, well, dude, we got a 15% refund rate that's going
• 22:08
  on. Let's figure that one out.
• 22:10
  So we did, I looked at what the people were saying and they were
• 22:13
  actually invoking the refund during their sales conversation.
• 22:17
  So all I did was take the the sales conversation.
• 22:22
  They were basically saying this, if we haven't earned our money
• 22:25
  today, just let us know and we'll refund you.
• 22:28
  Call 800, get a refund, right? And so all I did is I reframed
• 22:32
  that whole process to where we, we added up the numbers that we
• 22:36
  would in our training. And at the end people were
• 22:39
  reporting, hey, I just found $5000 a day in my business.
• 22:43
  I just found two 7.7 million. And then we just changed the
• 22:47
  language to, well, I think we've earned our $229 for this
• 22:50
  training. What do you think?
• 22:52
  And they said yes, and the refund rate dropped within a day
• 22:56
  from 15.3 to under 1% and never came back up over that.
• 23:02
  That's the reason you want to measure metrics in your
• 23:04
  business, because when you measure the metrics, you know, I
• 23:08
  also found 170,000 leads over three years that they never
• 23:11
  followed up on with the sales team.
• 23:15
  Wow. So think about it, $13 a lead
• 23:18
  170,000, no wonder they're 27% in the water, right?
• 23:22
  So, but a lot of CEO's will look at from the top numbers down.
• 23:26
  They don't get into the nitty gritty as a solo, as a
• 23:29
  fractional, it's in you got to because you are the CEO of the
• 23:33
  company. It's your money going out and
• 23:36
  your money coming in. So if you want to grow by 1/4,
• 23:39
  you can figure it out in the metrics and that'll tell you how
• 23:40
  you grow by by each one in the quarter.
• 23:43
  Yeah, Wow, such a good story. Appreciate you sharing that with
• 23:46
  us. Like you.
• 23:47
  I mean, I think it's it's one of those things where we all know
• 23:50
  we need to track metrics, but then when actually coming down
• 23:52
  to it, we get lazy or we forget or it's like, oh, I'll do it
• 23:56
  later. And then you potentially miss
• 23:58
  out on, you know, as you said, leads not being fought up on or
• 24:01
  just, you know, who knows what's going on.
• 24:03
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, people know they need to
• 24:04
  floss their teeth and water pick and do all that other stuff, but
• 24:07
  they don't. Then they go to the dentist and
• 24:09
  it's like you got 4 cavities and it's like, no, no, I don't want
• 24:13
  no, no, no needles, no this right.
• 24:15
  Well, you wouldn't have had those things if you flossed
• 24:17
  every day and you want to pick, right?
• 24:20
  But I brush my teeth. It's not enough.
• 24:22
  You got to go that little extra in that process.
• 24:25
  Yeah, the number of times that you got to go the extra has come
• 24:28
  up on this podcast. I mean, it feels like the
• 24:30
  difference between an average performer and a high performer
• 24:35
  is frankly just doing a little bit more.
• 24:37
  It's doing a little bit more and doing it with what we would call
• 24:41
  strategic outcomes versus tactical outcomes.
• 24:44
  Strategic outcomes are we want not just one thing that happens
• 24:49
  from everything we do, but multiple things.
• 24:52
  So for example, if I make a cold call and I ask people when when
• 24:56
  you make a, when you make a sale, when you make a sales
• 24:58
  call, what do you want as an outcome, right?
• 25:01
  And they'll always say, I want a sale.
• 25:02
  And I'll say, well, what happens if you don't get the sale?
• 25:05
  You just hang up and it's done. Don't you want to build
• 25:08
  credibility, maybe ask for a referral, maybe, you know, get
• 25:13
  permission to have the conversation later on.
• 25:16
  I mean, what about building the relationship?
• 25:18
  You know, what about extending the relationship?
• 25:21
  What about looking for another opportunity within that that the
• 25:24
  existing relationship, right. We want multiple things coming
• 25:28
  out. So it's really about leverage
• 25:30
  and creating a compounding interest type leverage in the
• 25:33
  process and then kicking up that activity and then you get the
• 25:36
  expanding compounding leverage in of the activities.
• 25:40
  Yeah. You talked to her again.
• 25:42
  I'm going back to the activities, the high performing
• 25:44
  activities. Yes.
• 25:46
  How long do you spend on? Let's say you're trying a new
• 25:50
  activity, you're trying cold calling, you're trying LinkedIn
• 25:52
  content, you're trying direct outreach, whatever it is.
• 25:55
  How long do you spend trying it before you know whether it's
• 25:59
  effective or not, whether you should stop doing it, Iterate on
• 26:02
  the approach? How do you think about that?
• 26:03
  It's an excellent question. I asked this question of a guy
• 26:06
  who wrote a book series called Guerrilla Marketing.
• 26:08
  His name's Jay Conrad Levinson when he was alive.
• 26:11
  And I actually helped Jay's company early on, and that's how
• 26:15
  I was introduced to Chet Holmes. He's like, you got to talk to
• 26:18
  Chet, right? So I asked Jay this question
• 26:21
  because if people don't know who Jay is, Jay was legendary in the
• 26:25
  marketing business, wrote series of books called Guerrilla
• 26:28
  Marketing, which is all low, no cost ideas to get it.
• 26:32
  But he worked in the advertising space and he's responsible for
• 26:35
  icons like the Marlboro Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy.
• 26:38
  A lot of people know, you know, the woo Hoo, you know, Pillsbury
• 26:41
  Doughboy. And so I asked Jay, I said, Jay,
• 26:44
  what's the number one challenge in marketing that people have?
• 26:46
  And he looked at me and said patience.
• 26:52
  And then I asked him, what's the number one challenge in sales
• 26:55
  which we could get into a little more.
• 26:56
  And he said 68% of sales are lost due to lack of follow up.
• 27:01
  And so I said, well, tell me more about the patience.
• 27:04
  And he said, Doug, it takes nine impressions upon the brain for
• 27:09
  somebody to recognize you as a brand.
• 27:13
  And I said, well, all right, that's not too bad, Jay.
• 27:15
  That's like 9 times. He goes, yes, but it takes 3
• 27:18
  views to get one impression. So somebody actually needs to
• 27:22
  see you 27 times in order to really know who you are.
• 27:27
  And I was like, OK, that requires patience.
• 27:29
  So the, the, the, the process, Bradley, is this, we start out
• 27:34
  with an idea. Now where do we get these ideas
• 27:37
  from? This is a first good step.
• 27:40
  You have clients, look at how you got your clients.
• 27:44
  You have clients who have said no.
• 27:47
  You've had clients who have said yes.
• 27:49
  Go interview them and say how would you prefer to be contacted
• 27:52
  if somebody like me was going to be contacting you?
• 27:57
  I don't know why people just don't have two year olds, 3 year
• 28:00
  olds, they ask all the time, why daddy?
• 28:02
  Why mommy, why? You know, like we don't ask as
• 28:04
  adults. So once you understand that,
• 28:08
  then construct, put like 10 ideas down on a page.
• 28:12
  Then each month put one out. Now, if you're so busy you can't
• 28:19
  do it one every 45 days or one every 60 days.
• 28:22
  If you go over 60 days, Bradley and I are going to drive to your
• 28:25
  house and we're going to have a conversation with you.
• 28:28
  So I'm joking, but we might, I don't know, but the the every 30
• 28:37
  years is preferable. You put it into play, see how it
• 28:40
  works. You grade it.
• 28:42
  I learned this from Jay. Grade it from a through FF being
• 28:46
  it failed a being, hey, we're going to Harvard University
• 28:49
  because there's an A+, right? And each month you're looking at
• 28:54
  it and saying this worked. I don't think this worked.
• 28:56
  You're testing it and you're trying to move it from the
• 28:59
  whatever the C to AB plus to AB to an A, you know, and so on and
• 29:05
  so on, right, When you can get it in the A to B range.
• 29:08
  Those are high performing activities, CS, DS and FS.
• 29:14
  Yeah, right. So what you're doing is you're
• 29:18
  grading these things and you're giving it a bit of time.
• 29:22
  Now, if you're doing a short activity and you can't dial it
• 29:25
  in within the 1st 30 to 60 days, it's probably not going to work
• 29:29
  for you, right? But here's the thing.
• 29:33
  You got to give it a truthful evaluation.
• 29:36
  If it's like you're making cold calls and you're like, well, I
• 29:39
  didn't really give it my all on this call.
• 29:41
  Well, it's not the cold call, it's, it's the individual,
• 29:44
  right? So, but what you're trying to do
• 29:47
  is get it to an A or B and you just take your time doing that.
• 29:51
  So usually 30 to 90 days is kind of the window for most of the
• 29:55
  stuff that I test. But you know, like with a
• 29:59
  podcast, you're not going to know in 30 to 90 days, right?
• 30:03
  I mean, I was, when I, when we launched our podcast, I made
• 30:09
  $82,000 in the first year off the podcast.
• 30:12
  And I was like, I went to my, my people work for the, for me and
• 30:16
  the company. And I'm like, we're killing this
• 30:18
  podcast. Like no way.
• 30:20
  It's like $82,000. All this effort energy.
• 30:23
  And, and then they, they say, well, why don't you talk to some
• 30:26
  other podcasters? And I did and they're like, you
• 30:28
  made $82,000 in your first year in your pod.
• 30:30
  What are you crazy? You're killing that.
• 30:32
  What are you dumb, right? And I'm like, well, what do you
• 30:34
  mean? Like because I was ignorant,
• 30:36
  right? So really, I guess that was an A
• 30:38
  or B really in, in a lot of ways.
• 30:42
  But we got to give it time on something like a podcast because
• 30:46
  the average podcast doesn't start producing something for
• 30:49
  6:00 to 12:00-ish months out. So if we just judge it on a 30
• 30:53
  to 90 day basis, you're going to clip it off before it's success.
• 30:56
  I just happened to be lucky in the first, second, third month,
• 31:00
  people were calling me and and hiring me off the podcast.
• 31:04
  So, but if you're doing something short term, 30 to 90
• 31:07
  days. So we're about out of time, but
• 31:09
  I'm curious, you know, if our audience wants to find you.
• 31:12
  Pick your brain, work with you guys, Where do they find you?
• 31:15
  What are your engagements look like?
• 31:17
  Yeah. I mean, so we run a master class
• 31:20
  twice a month. Is it OK if I promote that?
• 31:23
  Yeah. So I'm giving you an opportunity
• 31:25
  self for both. So we're doing 1 regularly.
• 31:31
  We call it Stop the leak. And so it's, it's at CEO Sales
• 31:36
  strategies.com/stop the leak. And we're soon going to put up
• 31:45
  another link because we're going to be adding additional master
• 31:48
  classes, but that would be at CEO Sales strategies.com/MC for
• 31:52
  master class where you could see all of them.
• 31:55
  But right now we're focused on this one master class, and that
• 31:58
  would be a great place for them to check it out.
• 32:00
  They can if they just Google me. Bradley at Doug C Brown don't do
• 32:05
  Doug Brown because Doug Brown is a professional hockey player,
• 32:08
  okay? He used to play for the Detroit
• 32:10
  Red Wings and his son plays for the Boston Bruins.
• 32:13
  And I can't skate to save my soul.
• 32:15
  So but Doug C Brown revenue growth, I'll come up everywhere.
• 32:20
  My LinkedIn is Doug Brown 123, but if they want to send an
• 32:23
  e-mail directly, just send it to doug@ceosalesstrategies.com.
• 32:28
  The engagements, a lot of times people I and I'm, I'm going to
• 32:32
  say this just for the record, we work with all size companies.
• 32:35
  So you can be a solo, we work with lots of solos, you know,
• 32:39
  and I've also worked with Intuit, Procter and Gamble, CBS
• 32:42
  Television and those type of companies.
• 32:44
  So, you know, if you have a, a desire and want to talk, please
• 32:49
  reach out. And if you want, you know, to
• 32:53
  listen to our podcast, it's the CEO Sales Strategies Podcast.
• 32:58
  Awesome. And we'll we'll link everything
• 33:00
  in the showdown so people will be able to access it no problem.
• 33:02
  So thank you. Appreciate it.
• 33:04
  Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much for
• 33:06
  sharing your wisdom with us today.
• 33:09
  You know, it's really the the top thing is predictable
• 33:11
  revenue. It truly is for our audience.
• 33:13
  So hopefully people learned a thing or two from from hearing
• 33:16
  you speak and just appreciate your time and insights.
• 33:19
  Bradley, I also want to put out there, if people want to give me
• 33:23
  a little bit of feedback, I've actually been thinking about
• 33:25
  writing a book on predictable revenue.
• 33:27
  So if they're interested in that too, just let me know that
• 33:31
  because if I get enough responses, then I will write the
• 33:34
  book and put it out there for people.
• 33:36
  Yeah. I mean my, my response would be
• 33:39
  absolutely. I think I would almost guarantee
• 33:43
  it. And the question really ends up
• 33:44
  being to you, what's your niche within that, right?
• 33:47
  Because predictable revenue can be for anybody.
• 33:49
  I'm sure there's been books written about it, you know?
• 33:52
  What niche would you pick and help you really stand out?
• 33:55
  Yeah, yeah. And it's a, it's a great point,
• 33:57
  right? And I, you know, this is exactly
• 33:59
  what we teach. And we, we, we have because
• 34:02
  what's going on in the world, we're, we're now focusing more
• 34:07
  on individuals, independent business professionals and
• 34:11
  individuals because I don't like what's going on in the world.
• 34:14
  I mean, I, I have daughters who are in their 20s and I hear
• 34:17
  their friends talk and they're like, my God, I can't, I can't
• 34:20
  afford an apartment, right? I can't afford this.
• 34:24
  You know, when I was in my 20s, I, I didn't really say those
• 34:27
  things because, you know, at least it was attainable, You
• 34:31
  know, when people are trying to retire.
• 34:33
  So our, our, our idea is similar to yours, you know, help people
• 34:37
  make an extra $100,000 a year and it, it's the difference
• 34:42
  between living life and living a quality of life, so.
• 34:46
  Yeah, yeah, love it. Well, I'd love to, I'd love to
• 34:49
  read the book. So feedback of 1 here.
• 34:53
  But yeah, I appreciate your time, Doug, and wishing you all
• 34:56
  the best with your business and the upcoming book.
• 34:59
  Thank you.