694 — Win-Win Selling with Doug C. Brown

Well, my guest today started selling at 6 years old. When did you first have to sell something, pitch something? What did you learn? I remember a sales job of— how old would I have been? I don't know, 9 or something, and having a real tough time with it. We'll get into all that more in just a minute.

Hey, everybody.

Bill Gallagher, scaling coach, author of Busy Is Broken. We bring our show to you every week, about 700 now. Wherever you're getting this, just, you know, come back every week. Every Wednesday we drop a new episode on you. 10 years now. We've got more than a couple out there. So hopefully stories about growing, scaling your company. Hopefully they're helpful for you. We share authors, gurus, CEOs, a whole range of things, plus stories about our own clients and my own experiences as CEO and as a coach. So every week you come. If you want to read something about the book and how to maybe scale up with more ease, BusyIsBroken.com is available for preorder by the time you're watching this. And lots of little extra groovy things for our preorder audience. Book drops in September. So, um, if you're hearing this before September, uh, 2026, then you'll preorder it. But you'll get lots of groovy stuff by being part of the preorder crowd. Busyisbroken.com. All right, listen, my guest today, uh, is Doug C. Brown, not to be confused with the hockey player. Doug C. Brown, author of Win-Win Selling, um, It's all about reframing sales as a mutual value creation, not persuasion. Uh, he's also CEO of Sales Strategies and they work with people on breaking into the top 1% of performers. Started selling at the age of 6, the military veteran spent time in music, nuclear medicine, on and on and on. Um, and, uh, this is whole world. So sales is one of those evergreen topics. Doug, welcome to the show.

Hey Bill, thanks for having me on. I'm very grateful.

All right. So talk to us about this arc. 6 years old, you sell, then military, music, medicine on like, like what? That's an unusual path.

Yeah. Well, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Right. So it's good. So I worked for my father's business and had side businesses for the first, I would say, 18 years of my life. I started working for my dad's business at age 3 and we started selling at age 6. In his company.

And what was that business?

It was an industrial machinery repair company. So we worked on industrial equipment. We sold all kinds of stuff, anything on and around that. And I loved it. You know, I got to hang out with the adults. You know, they, they brought me to lunch. It's— I hear my mother wasn't too pleased because they brought me to the bars during lunch, you know, to negotiate things and things like that. So But, you know, it was great. I learned a lot of lessons sitting at CEOs' tables of, you know, manufacturing companies and all kinds of different companies. And I absorbed a lot of it when I was, when I was growing up. It's right around the time I started learning, hey, leverage. And, you know, I learned that from— I was probably 7 when I started learning that because it was— what was happening is I—

I leverage for a 7-year-old is what do I have on dad to get him to say yes?

You know, my father was a unique guy. I mean, I never— my dad died young. So I didn't, I didn't ever ask him the question, like, because all my brothers went through the same pathway. You know, geez, Dad, did you need like low-cost labor? Or were you trying to teach us, you know, maybe a little both. But I was almost 7 years old. And I remember back then, this was in 1969. And back then I was getting 25 cents an hour, which, you know, for 7-year-olds, pretty cool. You know, making $10 a week. And yeah, and I remember selling a part for $20. And I looked up what we paid for it, it was $10. And I was like, wait a minute, this took me like 6 minutes. Like, you know, I just made $10, but I'm working 40 hours a week for that same $10. So What if I just sold these parts and got a piece of it? Like, I got 20%, $2 every time I sold a part, you know, I could sell way more parts in a 40-hour week. And that's, that's really when it started kicking into my brain that you should be focused on some things more than other things. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, you know, probably should have been focused on homework and stuff in school, but I was really focused more on how do I create the leverage.

Why do you think it was that you set aside sales and went into the military?

Well, I think I'll tell you the reason I went into the military, which is everyone in my family went into the military, right? It was kind of the credo. You did that and you had to get a college degree. That was it, you know, because it was back in the era when, you know, like that mattered. A lot. Yeah. And, you know, I also saw it as a way to pay for college, because it was, you know, with the GI Bill and things, as you know, being in the military.

Yeah.

So it was kind of, you know, you serve your country, you do your thing, and, you know, you bring pride to the— pride to the family. And, you know, and you're adored for being in the military at that point. And It was just something that was really not much of a negotiation or a thought process that you don't do. But, you know, carrying sales, like, I mean, man, you got to sell in the military. And that's the thing about selling that people don't really realize, that they're selling every day of their life, no matter whether they're formally classified as a salesperson, or we're just selling our partner on staying with us through life, or we're selling our way into a job, or You know, negotiating on, you know, where do we want to go out on Friday night, right? It is always people communicating for the betterment of a common outcome or a common goal.

Yeah, that's an interesting thing. When you think, when you say selling in the military, I think that's interesting because normally we're not thinking that that is a sales environment. And yet, Lots of environments are sales. So what would that look like for you?

Well, for example, when I entered into basic training, you know, I had to sell myself and show that I was capable of being a squad leader in basic training. And, you know, when you're a squad leader, you get a few extra benefits. For sure. As you know, right? So, you know, I had to be able to sell the recruiters on what I wanted for a job, and they were selling me on what they wanted me to enter into the job, right?

Yeah.

So it's always a sales process. You're selling— if you're enlisted, you're selling to the NCOs or noncommissioned officers. You're selling to your, you know, your peers, you're selling to the officers. You know, we as a, as a, in basic training, we're trying to sell to get a weekend pass. So we can get out of that convincing thing, persuading, looking for yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that's, it's natural with a child, a child does this from their, you know, early years on up. Right. So it's, it's no more, we're just big kids, you know, in bigger bodies. Right.

So when kids though persuade, they start with begging. Right. And then, and, and cuteness maybe. And then, and then they go to win-lose, which is I'm going to make so much noise that you're going to cave.

Yeah. Or, and, and, or they, they also, if one parent doesn't say yes, they tend to go to the next one. And if that doesn't work, they tend to go to the grandparents and they, you know what I mean?

So a different buyer.

Exactly. So, you know, and I mean, that's no different than what you do in the corporate world. If you get a no with one person and you know that you can help the company, you know, solve the problem, gain the opportunity, you find the other person who can say yes.

Yeah. Now, uh, music and medicine, were those just detours or were they relevant to the the sales journey?

I think the music was definitely relevant. There's a high correlation between top-producing salespeople and people who are skilled in some type of art, music, creative.

In what way?

Well, it's improvising and creative like when you're playing on stage, for example, or you're in any art and things are in real time, they don't always go to the script. Yeah, there's—

things, things deviate, right, right, right.

And so you build these skill sets to be able to, um, to be able to communicate with people in real time on the fly, and that is a huge advantage in a meeting, if you will, you know, especially multi-person meeting, one-on-one on multiple or multiple people on multiple. You've got to be able to coordinate the drummer, the bass player, the guitar player, the sax player, the lead vocalist, the backing vocals. All of that has to come in in a harmony or people on, you know, off the stage will recognize it.

When were you, uh, first like full-time sales, dedicated real?

Well, I, I would say that's an interesting question to me because most of my life I was full-time sales, but it was never classified as full-time sales, right? It's like, so if we had our own business, we're, we're always in sales, uh, well, you better be, right? Especially when you're starting the business up. You know, especially to the first million dollars, you just— that's your job, selling. But my first real sales job, I believe, was actually selling music equipment while I was going to— so when I was in the military and then out of the military, and then I went into the reserves, I was selling music equipment to a lot of the bands that people listened to on the radio back then, like Aerosmith and the Eagles and Billy Joel's band, and like Paul McCartney and the Wings, you know, all those, all those bands. I was actually actively selling to either the band or the members of the band. Um, and it was the best job I ever had in my life. I, I loved it. I would get up, didn't have to be to work till 10 o'clock in the morning. It worked like 7 at night and then went out and went to the music venues and continued selling, right? Um, I loved it. And, uh, so I— that was my first, like, they didn't really call us a salesperson, but they— it was more of an account executive type position where we were doing that. Uh, and then my real first formalized job came, uh, soon after the medicine, because I entered in— I got degrees in biology, nuclear medicine, and I was on my way to being a doctor. And while I was working in the hospital I realized that medicine is actually a business. I didn't think of it that way before. And while I was in the hospital in nuclear medicine, I realized I was making more money selling music equipment to the bands than I was actually in the hospital. But I didn't have to worry about insurance, needle sticks from AIDS and all that stuff at that time. So I pivoted out of that and took a telecommunications sales job. And And I tripled my, my income from the hospital in my first year. And what year? Oh, that was 1997, I think.

And what— who did you— can you say who you sold for?

Yeah, a company called Paytech Communications. They are now called Windstream Communications. And I was, I think, the 100th employee in that company. And it was a startup. And we grew that company Uh, I joined, we were about $50 million and we, we went from $62 million to $368 million, I think, in 2 years. Yeah. And I was the number 1 rep in the company.

And at that time, so that was that VoIP or what were you—

No, no, no, the, uh, the— it was just prior to the, to the VoIP. Um, so what we sold was a So there's something called a T1, which is a digital circuit, right? It's— it has 24 channels of 64 kilobytes apiece, right? That's, um, but back then, to do local calling, long-distance calling, and data internet, if you want, uh, you needed one singular T1 for each job. So, so you'd buy 3 T1s: local T1, long-distance T1, data T1. We had a technology that could allow one T1 versus three T1s to do the same job for most companies because most companies were never using— like, they may have 6 or 8 phone lines, but they were buying 24, if you will. And so we would— it was really great in the beginning because what we would do is we'd find the companies that had those services and say, hey, you want to reduce your $3,000 bill down to $1,200 or $1,500 a month? And they would be like, what do you got, kid? Right. And so that company grew like crazy, crazy good. And, you know, I was very successful there in that company. And that really kind of like, that was my first like real corporate selling job, like where I was selling to real high-end businesses that were, you know, brand recognized names. And I was getting myself into The more and more I got into it, the more and more I was like, this is fun. Let me go sell at higher level companies. Like, you know, and then I started getting into like Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Procter Gamble and, you know, big, big companies like, like that. And it was awesome. And I learned a lot, you know, I learned how CEOs think, for example, because when I was growing up, my dad had a business with, you know, 14 employees. And that was one level, but when you have 14,000 employees, you think on a different level, right? That type of thing. Um, and so I was working with a lot of business owners, and that, that sparked my imagination to be like, okay, well, wait a minute, I can actually teach what I know, and I can actually teach revenue growth and profit growth because I was approaching it from a business perspective. And that's one of the reasons I was very successful, because I could talk to the owners or the CEOs on their level of, you know, what they were considering as success, or, you know, what they were afraid of, or what problems they had and things like that. And so one thing just led into another.

So you're— pardon me— your book is Win-Win Selling. What is win-lose selling? I think we know, but can you give us an example or share a story of that, or Where did you get— like, how did you get onto this? And like, what's the opposite of it?

Well, the win-win concept came from— there was a book originally called Win-Win Selling, right? And I actually took that from there because I subscribed to that theory of really win-win-win. I was going to call it win-win-win selling, really, when it came down to it. Because 3, 3 people should win in any sale. You, the person you're selling to, and somebody else because of the actual transaction, right? So, and that came about because there were so many people I was witnessing playing win-lose sale. Like, they would sell stuff that the client actually didn't need, but the client didn't know it, but they were stuffing their commissions to try to make their numbers. And my subscription to, to life and win-win is these people were doing this because they didn't have enough prospects. And so people get really clingy and greedy in sales when they don't have enough prospects. So part of the premise of win-win selling was you've got to have multiple ways of driving leads. And so in that, in that corporate job, for example, uh, I had built— so in, in the— they had an indirect sales channel which was, uh, 1099 people on the full commission. Um, and a lot of people call these partner programs or agent programs.

Yeah.

And I was cold calling and going to networking and doing all the methodologies that a regular sales rep would do. But then what I did is I looked at their partner program and I said, why can't I create one of these internally?

Mm-hmm.

There are people who don't want to actually sell the products or services, but there are people that have clientele who would love to pick up an extra residual commission. So what I did is I started using that and going out to telephone vendors, those who sold hardware, data services, uh, cabling, things that didn't really compete with what I was selling but were complementary to them. And then I asked them the question, You have a client base that is your gold, and I understand, and I would protect that. But do you want to sell more phone systems, for example? And they'd say, sure. And I'd say, what's the average lease? And they'd say, oh, it was like $300, $400 a month. And I said, well, if I can reduce your phone bill of your client by $1,000 a month, we can make a deal with them and that they'd buy the new phone system and then they'd get a reduction and they'd be up new technology. We could install all this stuff. What do you think? And that to me was win-win. And so it's win-win-win. I win, the client wins, and the vendor wins, right? And that's an example of win-win-sell— win-win-win selling. And that's exactly what I did, and that's what propelled me to the top of the charts in the sales. Uh, at one time, Bill, I had 62 incoming calls a day from vendors, and I had to hire 2 assistants to actually handle the volume, right? So the company was looking at this young guy going, what's this kid doing? Yeah, like, he's killing— he's outselling teams of 9 combined, you know, uh, every single month. And so that, that's, that's an example of win-win. And win-lose is just like somebody, somebody loses, and you, you just try to make the sale and it's not the right sale for the client, you're better off walking away from that and, and giving the client what they really need, whether it's a relationship you have or don't. And they will remember that. I've picked up so many referrals doing that, just saying, look, I'm not the right guy for you, my service product's not the right guy for you, just— this is. And then they would be like, hey, I got 3 other people that you can talk to. So I lose 1 sale, but I gain 2 others. Out of the three.

It's funny, once upon a time I sold T1 services and T3 and things like that quite a bit earlier, um, and they were definitely more expensive kinds of things. But, and, um, that was long before when there was still a lot of switched voice circuit stuff going on, um, which is of course all gone today.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, that's—

but there was a time when that— and I think from that and from other things, I think win-lose is the prevailing thing. And it looks like, like I go to the dealership to buy a car. Yeah, mostly, uh, most cars you have to buy through a dealer and then the dealer's doing every little game they can to shake every little dollar out of my pocket for as long as possible. And every little trick in the book, is, is designed to sort of take advantage of me.

Yep.

By the same time, and we think of that like a salesperson, am I being manipulated, screwed, um, sold something fraudulently, etc., by a salesperson? But the opposite is also true. Like, there are customers, clients, who are trying to buy something, uh, whether it's B2B or B2C or whatever, who are trying to make sure that you can't make a profit. Oh, I want to make sure, like, look, I sold, um, we had a line of fashion jewelry for years. The department store's buyer, their job was to try to make sure that they left no profit with all their suppliers. Right. Right. Think about that. Like there's a whole industry where they're really trying to make sure that you're not left with anything more than you could possibly survive. They're hoping on you to like hang on to life because they want an ongoing supply. Supplier, but they don't want you to have a rich, good life. They, they want to make sure so they can pass along the maximum advantage to compare to any other store, that kind of thing. So customers as well as sellers, so buyers and sellers both are trying to get the other person to lose. I want you to like not make any money on this deal, make money on everybody else, but not on me, like, you know, that kind of thing. And I think that I feel that all the time. Like, hey, I want you to help me grow my company, but I, but I want to make sure I want to pay you like the minimum, like hourly possible for this thing. Help me make millions. I do get that sometimes.

Right. Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons we work on a modest fee plus a percentage, right. In our, in our business and the other side, you know, doing that, helping companies. Right. Because it is a win-win. Now, if they're at that place, and this is the part, remember I said you've got— you, you win, folks, they win, and someone else wins, right?

Yeah.

But if you're not going to win, you're the first to disengage, because what we want to find is profitable clients. We want to find businesses that we like to work with, that people we like to enjoy it. I don't really think there's really many bad clients out there, Bill. Like, over the years, I used to think Oh, they were a terrible client, right? But when I trace it back, it was really a bad sales decision on the front end that created the bad client. And a lot of times if you are, like in your case, when you're talking about procurement, like people who are just paid to like drive the numbers down, you're not at the right level of buyer most of the time. That's what I found. And, you know, I've certainly made that mistake where You know, back in the telecom days, it's like, well, geez, you know, can I, you know, 4 cents was really a great rate back then for, you know, for long distance. And like, can I get 2.2? You know, it was like, um, you know, and, you know, your competitors are going to give me 3.9, you know, and you're giving me 4. And, you know, it's like, you know, if, if it's not profitable— and that's what I loved about Paytech, we actually had a profit matrix. And we would put all the numbers in. And if we didn't hit a certain profit level, we walked away from the deal and we let the competitors take it.

Yeah. That, uh, yeah. Figuring out what your number is and where it is. I think that it, when winning has a definition, right? So I remember when I had a software company and I would go to people and we had our biggest breakthrough when I realized my buyer wanted to solve a business problem and they wanted a predictable thing. They wanted to get some software that did something right. They had something in mind by a particular date for a certain budget. And I'm like, oh, what if I could help you be on time, be on budget, get the thing that works, and I'll just take it? Now, my solution on the other end, the win for me then, in addition to giving you what you wanted, was to go to figure out how to make money at that. So I took your flat fee and most people even today, they want to sell that kind of thing for like an hourly rate. So I'm going to charge you $250 an hour, $500 an hour, $700, like whatever it is, some number per hour to develop your thing. And, and of course, all that's kind of going away today with AI coding. But in, in for a while it was that. Now on the flip side, I'd go and I'd say I'd find subcontractors, people people like that. I'd be like, Doug, hey, can you build this database app and do that kind of thing? What do you want per hour? How much time do you think you need for this? And then I'd be problem solving. Could I find a guy who would do it, or gal, for a particular thing at a price? And where was the intersection? And then was there enough left there for me to feel like I had a business? And in general, there was, because the value I was providing was predictability, certainty, predictability, Not an hourly exchange. And in general, that was a very profitable win-win thing. You got your app on time, on budget. I made a good profit. My subcontractors made what they wanted to make, you know?

Yeah, because everybody's thinking there's two, there's two parts of a sale and they're all, they're always considering it. What's the business return on investment? What's the personal return on investment? Right. And you said the magic word value. So what's the perception of their value on their business return on investment or personal return on investment? Um, you know, when you brought up the car dealer, for example, right? I mean, most of us, when we go to a car dealer, unfortunately— it's not to beat up on car dealers, I know some really good ones— yeah, right? You know, most of the time you go in there on the defense because of the perception of it. But the reality is, or used to be more so, that they had all the information and the buyer didn't, right? So they— the buyer was at a disadvantage. They didn't know. Now with the power of the internet and the power of, you know, AI, you pretty much can find out exactly what that car dealer is paying for, right? And most car dealers are only working on like a 1 to 4% profit anyways, right? So, um, you know, so like an $85 million dealership might, you know, be pulling in $3 million, you know what I mean, like on the, on the high side, um, on the profit side. So, but there's no need to play the games that any people who play those type of games, uh, you know, and the one thing that like when people who play those games, they miss out on is the repeat buying, the increased buying frequency, the increased transactional value that come out of these type of things. And they, they miss out— that's huge profit. They miss out on that all the time. Um, you know, I mean, man, I used to lease cars every 2 to 3 years for the company. So we had, you know, 4 to 6 vehicles that we were leasing at a regular rate. Not once did one salesperson ever stay in touch with me to build a relationship. They, you know, they'd send me an email or maybe a phone call, you know, like 30 days before the lease is up. And it's like, I already made decisions on all these other leases, right? So there was no loyalty on the buyer's side to— from my perspective to them, right? So which, you know, if you take on the, the, the reverse of that if they had stayed in touch. I mean, I've been leasing vehicles for 40 years. Like, imagine the— like, there's no cost of acquisition on me if I already have the relationship built with that salesperson. And that salesperson could have, you know, if they're at the same dealership, 20 years.

There's probably enough turnover and lots of people don't stick around the same dealership. I have had— I just actually about 2 days ago got a message from the local Mercedes dealership that, hey, Is your wife's car— how are you feeling about it? Do you want another car? Can we help you? What are you thinking? Do you want— is it— are you going to do it now this year? And I think it wasn't the same salesperson. So that person clearly moved on. In fact, I don't know, it was a year ago or something. I know it was a couple of years ago. We had a— we— the car got in an accident. It was totaled. We needed a new car. And I reached out to them to say, hey, would you do a repeat deal? They did end up doing a similar deal, but the person that I'd worked with had moved on. So I think there's enough turnover that it's not always— but does the company keep the relationship alive? Mostly not, right? Mostly good ones maybe do, but I've, you know, I've rarely—

I'm trying to think if there's ever one— there's one company that had stayed in touch maybe once a year. But that's not enough to keep the relationship strong, right? So it's— it doesn't have to be hard. I mean, you and I both know that follow-up is the key to every relationship in the world. You know, I mean, how many people, if they stayed in touch with their friends from high school, or even the high school, you know, school, that the people in there that went on to do great things could have done business back and forth, or had, you know, whatever relationship. They don't. It's a huge— the fun part about follow-up is you can easily get a 5 to 15% revenue lift just doing follow-up in a company, right?

So doing good, consistent follow-up. I do find like today selling a professional service is very personal in nature. I don't chase people down anymore. So I'm like, and I'll sometimes I'll need to tell them, Listen, I'm going to send you a couple of messages, but that's it. Like, I'm not going to hound you. And if you think as a salesperson, my job to hound you and that I'm going to do that forever, I'm not doing it. Like, you need to come. This is a coaching thing. You need to pull some of it to you. So don't expect me just to badger you. I don't have like overly involved things like that today.

Well, I think that, you know, follow-up doesn't— there's two types of follow-up in a lot of ways, right? There's that type of follow-up where we're following up for the sale itself.

Right.

Process. There's also follow-up just to stay in touch. And, uh, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, I, I, uh, I got a company, uh, NASCAR. Yeah, I got NASCAR with 2 years of follow-up. They— I mean, they didn't buy anything from me for 2 years, and I just stayed in touch with the buyer. And, um, you know, it's just once a quarter, hey, how are you? Just was thinking about you, right? That type of thing. And so I think the challenge for most people with follow-up is it's hard if they don't have any system to actually put it in place. And so just other priorities take life, you know, and the buyer's not ready at that moment. So we sort of go, hey, we're kind of busy, and we sort of move on. But it hit me with, uh, you know, I was the president of sales and training and independent 1099 for Chet Holmes, who wrote a book called The Ultimate Sales Machine.

Right.

Chet has passed on. But Chet told me a story, and he told me, he said, you know, it took him 5 years to get a relationship with Jay Abraham, who was another trainer, very well known back in the day.

Yeah.

And he said, you know, I made millions of dollars doing that, several million dollars. And he said, but it took me 14 years of follow-up to get the relationship with Tony Robbins. And he said that I'd make tens of millions of dollars out of, right? And so, um, I always kept that in mind, you know, because eventually Tony bought into the company and I became Tony's president of training and sales for 7 years, you know, with Chet. And, um, you know, that's opened a lot of doors for me in life. And so, you know, to this day I'm a big proponent. That led me on to a relationship with a guy named Russ Whitney. Who opened, uh, he had a $250 million training company and one of the brands they owned was Rich Dad Poor Dad, right? So, uh, I'm great friends with Russ till today. I mean, I'm having lunch with him actually, uh, this week. And so I think it's one of those things that we've got to kind of put a system in that place for Bill or just sort of gets deprioritized. And I know even in my life, it has to be systematic to— yeah, yeah, yeah. And it doesn't have to be this like gigantic follow-up, like, you know, I know salespeople and friends today that I get a regular—

like, I haven't talked to them in years, and I get a regular, like, holiday card, birthday greeting, things like that from them. It's just like they've created systematic— and I don't forget about them. I know who they are. And, and that matters more than a lot of things you could do.

Yeah, because the relationship capital leads us to other relationship capital. If we want to look at from a business perspective or a personal perspective, right? I mean, I met my wife through Relationship Capital, through somebody that we had been in business for, you know, for like 11 years. We just did business back and forth. And then he asked me to come to one of his events and speak at one of his events. And I did. And, you know, she was there. And, you know, so it's like, it's, it's one of those things that we never know how it's going to turn out. But we know how it's going to turn out if we don't stay in touch because the relationship will just wither off in a trill.

Right. What, um, so when you think top performers, right, versus everybody else, I, when I think about top performers, I think there were some who were, um, they brought in big, they were big hitters. They were great closers. Um, I think of others who were solution sellers and they played and they found unique opportunities. I think of others who just ran the basic, they ran a playbook consistently. They did all the, they developed more leads than anybody else. Right. There was more than one flavor of it. Um, and I think of everything else as spending a lot of time whining or talking about stuff, commiserating more than anything else. A lot of unbusy time, a lot of time by the water cooler, waiting for the good leads to come in, kind of.

Sure.

Get—

bring me the cream on top of the cream, right? And, uh, and then I'll scoop it off. Yeah, I mean, top performers, there's a few things that distinguish people if they want to be a top performer. Number one, they are always thinking in terms of how do I leverage. Uh, number two, how do I put everything into a system or a process? Uh, and they're always building their business skills and they're always building their personal skills. I find those 4 common things across a 1% earner, for example, compared to the, the other 99%. And, you know, if you're doing those things, the business skills, when you're building your own personal business skills, but you're building relationship skills, you're building all of the things that you would think of, or, you know, that, that, that person who's bringing in those big deals, actually, you know, unless they got lucky and just sort of stumbled onto something. But if they're doing it consistently, there's a reason they're doing it consistently. Um, you know, and they might be thinking in the beginning— I just had this conversation actually today with a, a friend of mine who owns a very successful company. And, you know, he, he and I are thinking we might— I might help him build a partner channel in the company. So, you know, I was asking him questions around leverage, like, who's our clients that say yes who aren't too small, who aren't too big that the sales cycle is going to take forever. You know, like questions like that. Where's that sweet spot that we can build an agent program out of and teach people how to do that so people are picking up and making a six-figure income, you know, um, in that business, but not like whale hunting to the degree where it takes 2 years for the decision to be made, right? Where the shorter— so we're— I'm always looking at the leverage points for myself and people that we support. And then how do we put that into a system, right, and create that system? Because, you know, like automated prospecting systems, for example, how do we do that? Like, how do we get high-performing activities and then how do we automate those things so that we have 6 or more ways coming in all the time consistently driving leads into us in building relationships, right? So all of that stuff is not haphazard. It's very systematic. How are we creating leverage points and everything that we're doing? Like, you know, when people make like the strategy, right, versus tactics— like when somebody— when I make a phone call to somebody, I'm thinking, what are the multiple outcomes that could come out of this call? Not, hey, I called somebody to make a sale. Well, what happens if you don't make a sale? Can I make a relationship? Can I make a referral out of that? Can I, you know?

Yeah, you're thinking, I hear connection and value in what you're saying versus am I going to get a sale or not? Is there a deal here or not? Is there an opportunity? I hear, can I make a connection to a human being and is there any value I can add, right?

Yeah, and to give an example on that, I just did a call of, right, last Friday if I remember. Um, and a friend of mine referred this person to me because they know I've been in the sales play for a long time. And this person was looking— my friend told me they're looking for a setter. And I know a bunch of people have setter companies, so I was like, yeah, just send them to me and I'll take care of it. Uh, a setter is somebody, an appointment setter, so somebody who calls upon and sets appointments for The next level, right?

Yeah.

And, um, and I'm like, I know so many people. It's like, just, you know, instead of you spending your time there, why don't you just send them over? I'll have a quick conversation, qualify, and introduce them to 3 or 4 people, and, you know, that'll be the end. But when, when I talked to his client, the gentleman asked me what, what I do, and I said, well, I find, you know, hidden margins and profit in company and increase margins and profits in companies, you know. Kind of like growing their operating profit, if you will. And he said, well, that's very interesting. I don't need that. I said, no, I know that you came here for— you're looking for this. Well, why don't you tell me what you're looking for? And he told me. And I said, geez, because he kept using the word setter. And I said, you know, sir, I don't believe you need a setter. I think you need a sales development representative or a business development representative. And so we talked through the conversation. And then I connected him with two of the best BDR companies in the country that I know of, and they're having conversations. And the gentleman at the end of the, at the end of the call said, you know what, let's set up an appointment. I know a lot of people who are looking for margin growth in their business. Why don't we set up an appointment for you and let's have that conversation and see what I can do to help you? So I have that appointment coming up this week, right? And so You know, it doesn't have to be a sale. It's doing the right thing by people. And, you know, do we prefer a sale? Do we prefer to get paid on it? Absolutely. But sometimes that's just part of the process of playing that win-win-win.

You know, maybe we could share a story about a client or from your own work where something went really, really badly, lost something that you felt like you should get, and how you pulled the learning from it. I feel like this is a thing that I'm doing again and again. It's often kind of the same one. And I'm like, I know the lesson, but consistently applying the lesson is always a challenge.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

Because we tend to default back to who, you know, our understanding, right?

Yeah.

I was just thinking out of the probably 3,262 mistakes I made like that over my career. Yeah, actually, I think one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made was not actually preparing for a meeting that actually turned out to be a really good meeting. I didn't take it seriously at the time. And I walked into this meeting totally unprepared. And they showed up with 6 people who were totally prepared.

There was an imbalance there.

Very, very much.

Yeah. Ready. And you're like, I'm gonna wait.

Yeah, I hadn't done the research on the company. I was so busy, you know, and it turned out to be a multimillion-dollar loss on my end, a multimillion-dollar sale. And, you know, at the time, getting 25% of a multimillion-dollar sale was very costly, right? So You know, and, and I have made that mistake again, but I make it far less, right? And yeah, yeah, I am consistently teaching people to do their due diligence on— I mean, look, a top 1% earner does their due diligence on a prospective buyer, you know, they just do. That's what, what— so I had no system around it back then, and it was just kind of gunslinging back in the time when I really made that big mistake. And so yeah, I mean, I learned from it. And then I started putting in systems. Now today, you know, back then you didn't have the internet or AI sources that you have today and all the ability to pull data like you can today. There's no excuse for not being prepared today. I mean, it's a matter of—

prepare so fast. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you can, you can find out most of what you want on a LinkedIn search, uh, you know, a, uh, a Facebook or, you know, Meta or whatever, you know, any of the social media profiles, as well as there are, you know, Seamless AI, Apollo, all kinds of services that, you know, have this information for you. And quite frankly, you know, just general internet search will also pull up a whole heck of a lot, or AI search will pull up a lot too. So there's no need or no reason not to be prepared. And again, what do they want for a business return on investment and a personal return on investment? You can start making some, some clear assumptions that you validate in your discovery meetings, uh, and you can come up with information that makes people— like, I'll give you an example. There was a gentleman who owned an aviation company and he sold it. And he sold this thing for 9 figures. So he was, he was doing okay, you know what I mean, after the sale. And he started another company. And I did some research on him prior to and realized the company had sold for this, you know, 9 figures. And I also, while I was doing the research, I discovered that his birth date falls right in the month of National Aviation Month. And I connected those two points. Yeah, he was also left-handed, and I connected that third point. Wow. And that's so—

yeah, so very, very specific and granular. Yeah.

And I did some research on all the people in history who were left-handed born in that month, and then I tied it into aviation. And I just sent them the information and I said, hey, did you know that, you know, this is National Aviation Month, that you were born and all these great people were left-handed in the aviation field?

Yeah.

Well, that turned into a really great relationship.

That's funny, 'cause you added the personal. Well, we've gone a little long in time. Changing the thinking, thinking about how to create value, win-win, thinking about relationships, getting systematic about things, bringing that military discipline to all of it, pulling the lessons of your whole life into it. That's the message of Doug Brown and Win-Win Selling CEO Sales Strategies. That's the link. It's on the screen. If you're watching, if you're listening, ceosalesstrategies.com is the thing to do. Doug, for coming on the show and talking with us today. It's been great.

Thanks for having me here, Bill. I appreciate it.

Always need to talk about selling and whether you're directly involved in selling or whether you're managing a team that's selling. I think these are enduring kinds of evergreen things to be attending to in the business. Thanks again, everyone, for watching, for listening. The book is available for preorder now. BusyIsBroken.com. ScalingCoach.com. Those are our websites. BusyIsBroken.com. Get the preorder. Lots of cool extra bonuses for people that preorder before the official release in September. So go there now. BusyIsBroken.com. It's all about how to grow your business and scale with more ease, less personal sacrifice, and a stronger team that's ultimately more saleable. Thanks again to Wanda for getting the show going, to my friend and mentor Vern Harnish for creating the whole Scaling Up Framework. Until next time, keep scaling.