EP 059: How To Increase Your Industrial Sales? Listen to Doug Brown and He will Make Your 2019 a Success!

In this Industrial Talk interview, Doug Brown, CEO of Business Success Factors, drops major sales, marketing and branding strategies that you, the Industrial Professional, can deploy today. With over 40 years of success in sales and marketing, Doug brings the solutions to the Industrial Talk Podcast. Anyone interested in making 2019 a Success, well this is a must listen to episode! You can find out more about Doug Brown at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougbrown123/

Website: http://businesssuccessfactors.com/

Email:  doug@businesssuccessfactors.com

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00]                   Uh, your, your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Alright, industrial trail blazers. That's Doug Brown. He is the CEO of business success factors. He's passionate and I mean he is passionate about increasing company and individual sales and profits. He loves helping people break through inner blocks that are holding them back. He loves hockey and of course his two daughters were going to be diving into in depth on all those factors because you know, being, I'm all about building that funnel, bringing in opportunities because it's about you, your success. Doug Brown supports that. Let's get this show on the road.

[00:43]                                    Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional, dedicated to transferring, cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hardhat, grab your work boots and let's

[01:01]                                    alright you industrial trailblazers. Thank you very much for joining the industrial talk podcast. I'm your humble host, Scott Mackenzie, and uh, this, this platform, this show is dedicated to you, your success, and it will do everything in its power to be able to provide content that makes you a success. Doug is no exception. Doug has a background in sales, marketing, branding strategies associated with that and I am so glad that he said yes and I, and you know, his quote is absolutely spot on. Time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's. So let's get this show on the road because it's important that we get into the interview with Doug. Do

[01:43]                                    I do? Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this. I love the fact that we get an opportunity to be able to, uh, always look at other strategies for bringing in sales, marketing and, and, and there, there's a ton of individuals out there, but man, Doug is an absolute Rockstar and like I said, I'm so glad that he is on it and, and he will be providing some incredible content for you to be a success. But you know, our, our role here is let's get going with some tailgates tailgate talk number one. So I need your help, humbly asking for your help. You can go out to my website and in the contact section, uh, provide names. I'm looking for industrial heroes now these are individuals that have done exceptional stuff with the community, with people, I mean really a sacrifice and I really, truly in my heart of hearts want to highlight and have those interviews with industrial heroes.

[02:41]                                    So I'm looking for nominations. I'm looking for the opportunity to be able to interview these individuals because their story and their, their life needs to be highlighted. So I'm asking and I'm humbly asking that you helped me find industrial heroes because, um, I, I'll, I'll go on out there and I'll do all the stuff that I need to do to be able, but I'm looking for recommendations and so just go out to our website industrial talk.com and put that contact in there. And uh, I humbly and graciously say thank you very much for helping find these industrial heroes. Number two, okay. Out there also on the industrial talk, a pod are on dusty talk website is a pole. It's an industrial insight pole. And it is specific to you, it is designed for you and it's data that we need for 2019. What are we doing, what, what are the challenges that industry is dealing with?

[03:41]                                    It's a simple poll. It'll only take you maybe two minutes at Max, but once you are participating in it, right, you get that data so that you as a professional, as a company, we'll see what people are, are providing. It's really important. Just go out there, no obligation. Take the pole and then you get free access to the industrial academy. And that takes me into number three. Number three, okay. We have formally launched the industrial academy. I've been talking about this for the past, whatever, and it takes some time to sort of put some meat on the bones and prop up the walls and all that good stuff. But the industrial academy is out there. So if you take that poll, you get free access to the digital branding, a course that I have out there at the industrial, uh, Academy. And now what that means is that you get to see some of the stuff that I do.

[04:33]                                    And, and you know, let's put it this way, this has been an opportunity for me to grow this whole podcast, digital stuff and uh, I've made good decisions, I made bad decisions. I've had a good experience and really painful ones, but I'm here to tell you in that course, I'll give you the sort of, the baseline and the foundation of what I think you can do as an industrial person, as an industrial company to get your digital branding moving forward consistently. So just go out there, take that course, but you got to go through the poll, take that poll, and then now you get the poll information and you get that digital course. You married them together. Boom. You're a Rockstar. All fantastic. Number four, can you believe I got number four js? Okay. I am also setting up a program called industrial groundbreakers or industrial, uh, trailblazers either or haven't really settled on it.

[05:33]                                    It is an onsite program here in Louisiana, Mandeville area. And uh, it is specific to you, the professional. And we're going to be covering leadership. We're going to be covering. I'm a sales and marketing of course, because that's what I'm all about, a purpose, just a number of topics and a so please be prepared and start looking for that and got one more. One more. Number five. I can't believe you got number. Oh yeah. I'm all about food. So I'm going to eat. I'm going to be submitting my recipe. Yes, about a Turkey and Sausage Gumbo. It is that season. Turkey and Sausage Gumbo. Now I think if you never had gumbo, you need to have this Gumbo. If you've had gumbo, you need to have this Gumbo, but I'm going to be opening it up to all you industrial professionals out there and I think I want to create a little competition into recipes and food and, and highlight you as a, as a professional, but you know I'm all about food, so be prepared for that one.

[06:35]                                    That is industrial approved food. And now finally, I don't have another one for this, but I have finally I took third place, third place in this physique competition. And if you're out there on my YouTube channel, you'll see it hanging up the big old swag metal right there now. Anyway, there it is right there. Third place. You know what happened after I did all of that, I ate, I ate like, there was no tomorrow. If that food was not nailed down, if that food was, I mean it was in my mouth and I just, I mean I went to the store, I went to the cookie aisle and I sorta just sorta just scooped out as much of the cookies as possibly can for one week. Now I'm back into eating right and go work out and all that fun stuff. So anyway, it was a lot of fun.

[07:22]                                    It was a unique experience, but there it is. Third place. Okay. Now let's get on with the interview right now. This is Doug Brown. Once again, he is a busy man. He said yes and I am so thankful and run without. You know, you don't want to hear me. I think we just get right into the interview, so thank you very much once again for joining the industrial talk podcast. Here's Doug Brown, he is the CEO of business success factors. Enjoy. All right. Welcome to the industrial talk podcast. I've got an incredible gentleman on va horn right now. His name is Doug Brown and I am. You Know Doug, we've been playing tag for. I don't know, it seems like a years. No, it's been months and. And now I got you on the industrial talk podcast and you listeners out there take notes because this is going to be a barn burner. How you doing Doug?

[08:11]                                    I'm doing fantastic, Scott. Thank you very much for asking. And I missed,

[08:17]                                    you know, it's funny because you got on the horn and it was so fun because you're saying, hey man, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm doing this and that and, and even I'm getting off. I'm getting all Jack because I'm thinking, oh my gosh man, this is exciting stuff and I'm getting excited and I really appreciate your time because I know that you're really busy.

[08:34]                                    Well, I appreciate you having me on the show and you know, we make, we make time for those things that are a priority and you were a consistent with me

[08:46]                                    and I'm a priority and I called you when we were out and about, and I said I can't make it because I'm just not putting the time. Anyway. You've been so gracious and I really appreciate it. So for the listeners out there, let's give them a little, uh, background and that piece of information. Doug, that is so unique to you and I, I, I got the idea, but go, you tell the listeners that's something unique about you.

[09:08]                                    Well, I think the unique thing really about me is really, I'm not that unique. However, I also have been working on my craft now for well over 45 years and so what I work on is I work on human dynamics and conversational sales. How do you sell and convert at a higher level with minimizing that rejection and selling human to human versus trying to sell a title? And so I think that makes me unique because I blend the combination of the human self with sales, so we unlock human potential in the sales process and sales people, companies, sales processes, sales, uh, systems or I'll put together, but they're put together with meaning that people relate to. So that's been really my unique, I think, my unique proposition on for most people anyway.

[10:03]                                    Well I got to tell you, here are the industrial talk podcast. For me personally, this has been a platform that I've constantly refer back to. How do you market, how do you brand, how do you sell, how do you improve that revenue, right? And profit and, and, and, and you just fit right in there. And I think that your story is going to be incredible to tell. Now you're out there on LinkedIn and I'm looking at your stat card out there, your professional status card and, and you've, you've been a part of the business success factor for it looks like five years plus close to six years, right? Well, how come you started that company?

[10:42]                                    I started this company actually to help salespeople sell people selling how business owners, uh, that challenge, you know, because prior to this, uh, I go into telecommunications consulting and auditing company as well still on that today, but prior to that, or even in tandem, I was fortunate enough to be able to become a president of training and sales for a man named Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes who ran a couple of business companies. So during that time,

[11:14]                                   sort of brushed over something that's very near and dear to my heart. That's Tony. Listen out there. That's Tony Robbins, you know the guy at Chet Holmes, and if you have an xm radio, you've heard Chet Holmes. Go ahead.

[11:25]                                    Yeah, we were all over that.

[11:28]                                    Like, I'm ugly. You were on Xm and it's a serious excellent, that's for sure.

[11:34]                                    3,000 leads a week on radio alone. And um, you know, I was running all of that. I was running the front end sales teams for them. I was running their trainers. The presenters was co running, coaching, helping in their ca, uh, consulting divisions. And I really got immersed in one of the things that kept coming back over and over and over to me with a business owners, you know, telling me there, their greatest pains and there, you know, their number one greatest pain is they wanted to make more sales. They wanted to make better quality sales. They want a better quality people, they want a better quality clients. They wanted to work easier, you know, many of them were, you know, like on a, on a death march within their business. So when I started doing is listening to this over and over and I said, you know, there has to be a better way to be able to train people.

[12:23]                                    Not that we weren't doing a great job at what we were doing at Chet Holmes international or business breakthroughs international, which were the two companies that I was running with them. Uh, we were doing a great job, but there was always this one thing that it came back to that the owners wanted to prematurely fire their staff, primarily the salespeople. And so I would start digging in and asking, you know, how are you tracking this, what are you basing this on? And ultimately it came down to that most of the time the company wasn't training their people are holding their people accountable when working on the human issues that were relating to sales. They were trying to just give them skills, training and skills. Training alone will increase sales. But when you combine that with what's holding up the individual, then once you release that part of it, all of a sudden sales just starts skyrocketing. And uh, and then when you put a system around them

[13:17]                                    to interrupt you, you say having employees feel comfortable with what,

[13:25]                                    uh, being in their own skin, knowing they're good enough, knowing that they're good enough to handle what the task is in front of them and allowing that to be allowing them to be themselves and be able to sell in a systematic process, but really feeling congruent with what they're doing. Not just not just, hey, I believe in what I'm selling. That's one component of it. But I believe in what I'm selling. And you know, I'm the guy who should be selling this, I'm the Gal who should be selling this and the reasons behind that are x, Y, and z. Once they understand that component of it, they actually become themselves and people buy from people, not titles. We just assigned titles, right? So the more that they can relate to humans and the more they know how to communicate with humans. If you do this correctly, you don't even need a presentation in your sales process because they're buying from you before you even get to the presentation component of it. Most of the time,

[14:19]                                    okay, so I'm going to go down that road, I'm going to live in Ruleville. You come into an organization and you see that organization is driven by a specific culture. That culture has been around for many years just because it doesn't happen overnight. And then you're saying, okay, I'm going to come on in and I'm going to make you feel good in your skin. What are those steps? What? How do you come into an organization and listen up industrial companies, this is good stuff. How do you come into an organization and say, okay, me, owner, I'm frustrated. My pain is like, I just need better sales.

[14:52]                                    I want to expand my market, I want to do whatever the typical stuff. What do you do, Doug?

[14:58]                                    First thing we do is we have a conversation. Then we assess what's going on. So there's multiple ways of assessing it, but typically what we do is we have a. We through the power of questioning, we assess where are they stuck, where are the blind spots? Every single company out there has a blind spot. What's a blind spot you can't see? Right? And so, and in many cases those blind spots are caught up in the system or the lack of a system that promotes sales. So a one blind spot for many companies, especially if they're a larger company, is a, their marketing and sales processes are not congruent. They're not generating sales quality ready leads through their marketing. They're generating marketing leads or, or just the lead. So once we make that continuance happens, Scott, when ends up happening is the conversion rate and the close rate all go up.

[15:53]                                    So because I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, Doug, give me an example of some of our marketing, my marketing is it out of, out of kilter with my sales. Give me an example of that.

[16:06]                                    Well, so for example, I'll give you, I'll give you a actual what's happening with genomes company in the beginning when I first got there. Wow. There you go, man. That's a great example. Yeah. So I was able to take their, um, their close rate on their, uh, trainings and we were able to up and it was 17 point eight percent and four months. It was 43 point two percent in a way that I did this was I looked at all of the information coming in. So we used to drive radio ads into a team and then we would put them on a paid training, we call it a masterclass training. And so that message was very good to getting people onto that particular training. The challenge was this, that different size companies have different needs and so the marketing was hitting the need and getting them excited, but when it came to actually investing in what they needed to invest, the sales process was slightly askew.

[17:03]                                    So the sales process was then trying to sell companies who were smaller, how do you put systematic processes and work on your operation, so you can scale and so even though they got a lot of the training and they funded a lot, they weren't actually plunking down their money to actually continue to go forward. In fact, when I ran the numbers on that audience alone, we had less than a three percent conversion rate on that specific audience that was under $500,000 and at that time, under a million dollars was about 70 percent of the leads coming in. So it was a huge segment of that, of that process coming in. And so what I did is I read tool, the sales pitch, and then I retooled the marketing pitch so that look as a smaller company, your your primary job, your number one job is to make sales.

[17:56]                                    And so when we changed that marketing on the front end slightly, it wasn't radical, it was slight changes. And then what we did is we had a different script for those who were underneath 700,000, 500,000 in that area. We had a different script which drove them into the process of now when we brought them into the training that they're going to learn how to work easier. So they're gonna work smarter, not harder, they're gonna have better marketing, they're going to have better sales processes, and they're gonna go for better quality clients because this is how we rapidly can increase their process, you know, if we can get them better quality clients, they work smarter right then and there because they'd have less hassles. Right. So it's all about that point. No, remember we had less than a three percent conversion. Not Conversion went from three percent in the first couple of months to over 60 percent.

[18:46]                                    That's just a few. A few months.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we added, we added in the first couple of months. Well, what's the secret sauce that, that's, that's, that's a tremendous improvement. That's tremendous Yeah, and you know, it added, I mean it's like, it's like the holy grail

[19:07]                                    in that case in kind of was because we started adding a million and a half a month to the bottom line, right? So it was kind of like what happened there, and this happens when you don't have to have a big company. These are smaller companies, right? These and what was more important as the smaller companies, now we're getting really strong results because that marketing and sales message was congruent with where they needed to be and what their pain points were and what they wanted to solve. So we actually segmented that segmentation is a huge component that a lot of companies miss. They'll just have leads coming in and they're not segmenting the leads. They're not

[19:45]                                    just play. Talk to me like I'm a third grader here, clarify and defined segmentation.

[19:52]                                    So segmentation is a form of basically putting things into different buckets. So let's say I don't take anything in the case of this, anything underneath $500,000 needed to go into a sales centric plan. Sales centric training and the messaging was changed for that. The sales process was changed for that. Anything over a million dollars, they needed sales, but they've now started to be able to put in more processes into the company. So when we went slightly changed and so we would have bucket one, bucket two for the next one of a million and above where we hit about $4, million to $5 million now we needed to start putting different types of processes in the company and the company's still water to grow sales. But the company actually wanted now to scale. And so we were down slightly changed the message. So we would have bucket three for the scalers once they were already in a scaling process, they wanted to significantly maybe doubled their sales.

[20:51]                                    We had another bucket for that and we had four different messages going on that had four different congruent sales process. Now these were radically different, but there was slightly different. So it'd be the difference. Uh, those of us who were, you know, dealing with another human being, you can say certain things from a man to a man. Scott, you and I could get along in a certain way, but we couldn't say the same things to a female audience, so we would slightly alter the message and the sales process because of the female audience. It's not being sexist, it's just that they want something different in life than generally someone else, and so we're going to bucket ties those down if you will, and then we would. We would crafting message and a sales process and the training component for that particular audience just as if we were training orthodontist or periodontist or trying to cosmetic surgeons in the dental industry, they going to want a or general dentistry. They're going to want a slightly different message.

[21:52]                                    So I want to make sure that you guys got that out there. Industrial listeners, it sounds like to me, you can pop in anytime, Doug, that we've got to, as industrial professionals, as industrial company owners, align as much as we possibly can have that, have that meaningful conversation between the marketing aspects and your, your sales and aligning those correctly. Right? And then through segmentation, being able to modify that sales process and, and be able to communicate well with those segmented items, correct?

[22:29]                                    Absolutely. It's all about two things in the beginning. Positioning number one, and then as you said in the sales process, the alignment part of the alignment process is the segmentation process. So you're aligning with the clients wants, needs, desires, fears, uh, aspirations, you know, ability to pay, willingness to pay. So you're segmenting these all down into that. And then so when you have, when your salespeople or if you're the owner of the company and you're doing the sales, when you're having that sales conversation, notice I didn't say you're selling them, you're having a sales conversation or what I call it conversion conversation. We're now talking to them about the things that matter to them. So it increases the speed of closure in the sale. It also increases the percentage of closure in the sale because you're now dealing with what we would call a sales qualified lead.

[23:27]                                  Wow. Hey, we're going to be breaking. Guys were listening to Doug Brown. He is the founder of business success factors. He's dropping some really great gems on us from a sales and marketing perspective and have urine industrial professional or a company industrial company. You need to be listening to this podcast because I guarantee you it'll make it better, so hang tight. Thank you very much for joining the industrial talk podcast. We will be right back. You are listening to the industrial talk podcast network. Alright. The industrial talk podcast has a new sponsored by the name of a s, g energy. Now this company helps private companies as well as public organizations of all sizes, reduce energy costs through the use of commercial led lighting, technology and electrical services. Now you know me, I'm a big fan of led just because. Well, first off, I don't have to change the lights, but add on a commercial basis.

[24:29]                                    Oh my gosh. The energy savings is phenomenal. The reduction in maintenance cost, phenomenal. Return on investment quick. It's, it's, it's incredible. And the environmental benefits self-explanatory. So you have any questions about led commercial lighting? You need to check out my friends@eightsGeEnergyLlc.com. Find out more because they know what they're doing, so check them out. All right. Welcome back to the industrial talk podcast. So glad that you have joined us. We're talking to Doug. Doug is a really discussing a lot about the sales. What we need to do and in offline when we doing the commercial was happening and I try to chit chat a little bit about it and I had said, Doug, where's the future going? Right? What? What's the, what do we need to sort of begin to adapt as industrial professionals, as industrial companies, you know, we have this one way of doing it in one way. I've been doing it for many, many years. Where are we going? What do we need to do? How do we adapt? Where do you see the future going? Doug

[25:38]                                    popped out sales processes that have been taught throughout a long period of time. Those are eroding and going away.

[25:45]                                    Give me an example of a top down selling

[25:47]                                    process. Crushing the objection, right? So somebody comes in and say, you know, um, uh, you know, I think your price is too high, or I think it's too much money. And uh, uh, top down sales process would teach somebody to repeat back and go compared to what your price is too high compared to what. Right, right. Comparing this to, right. And it's more of a combative type of process. Say A, a, a nurturing process, right? I mean, the whole idea sales

[26:19]                                    got to jump in. Industrial people being nurturing, put that on a dog on bumper sticker, industrial professional. You heard it here. First Industrial [inaudible] dot com.

[26:31]                                   A lot of people confuse the word meek week and so you know us to be meek. I mean, uh, I'll give you an example because some people might be gone, well, what's the difference, right? I mean, uh, you know, somebody who has studied martial arts is a master. There are whole primary focus for studying is so they don't have to fight, right? And so they will do anything and everything they can to avoid a fight. Now some people would view that as a weakness. Well, you know, uh, that's okay, but when you engage with that martial arts master, after 30 years of training, you'll find out they're not weak at all and you're going to find out the total opposite. Right? So, yeah. So the same in sales. I mean a lot of people have been brought up in a lot of old sales technology where it was like, listen, you want to crush objections, you wanna you wanna make a sale at any cost.

[27:28]                                    You know, you, when they lose in those gains are going to die because the Internet has actually changed the whole playing field. See Way back when you could. One could play those games in sales because they had the information, the salesperson selling had the information and the buyer didn't have as much or enough information in the form of education so the salesperson could use those points of leverage against the buyer and confused and trick the buyer. But now with the click of a button, that buyer became, becomes more educated than the salesperson. And many case, you know, just by studying online for five or 10 minutes, right. You know, the old adage of, you know, used to go into the car dealership and the car dealers could play all kinds of card games. Well now you don't need a card that you can buy 70 percent plus of the leads that come into car dealers today come online first.

[28:26]                                    Isn't that interesting? You're absolutely right. And I never really thought about that because everything and, and I'll, I'll be as bold as I can be. Everything's out there on the worldwide web. I mean I can, I can change a spark plug in a whatever it. There it is, there's the video, it's there, it's got the information and it's free of edits and it's at my fingertips. And so all you're saying is that hey, you're not going into a company and say, Hey, I got some advantages on you. Oh No, no, no, no. They, they have numbers and they know exactly what's going on. So you're going to have to change your strategy and recognize that industrial person, industrial company. Okay, go ahead. Continue. I keep on interrupting you

[29:09]                                    exactly right. Their strategy is going to have to change and the application and the tactics in which they employ. Otherwise what ends up happening is you're going to hear more nos more often because here's, here's the concept and the. Unless they have a specific niche product that no one else has, they have competitors and people want to buy from somebody who treats them like a human being versus just the sale. We're not selling to CEOs, CFOs, directors. We're not selling the titles were selling to people that wants, needs, desires, fears. Right? And unless they're taking into account the human percentage of this component like, hey look, I'm a buyer for procurement and my biggest fear is I'm going to make a buying decision that's going to compromise my job so I have to go home and tell my wife or my husband or my significant other, listen, I just lost my job and we're gonna have to cut back on the child's education.

[30:05]                                    No, you're absolutely right. Is that fast? Do you ride?

[30:08]                                    Not a good day. Right? And so what ends up happening is when people do talk down selling and everybody else is doing the same, what ends up happening is the components which actually they take into consideration in order of priority, the bottom value, the amount of service and amount of selection, those three of the top three, 76 percent of buying decisions made off their perception of value and service.

[30:30]                                    Okay, go ahead. I want you to slow down. Let's get that point. Say that again.

[30:36]                                    So 76 percent of the human buying decision is really about value in service

[30:43]                                   and that value is what they deem it to be. And the services, what they deem it to be. Price is part of value. The price perception is part of the value proposition. Service can be anything they deem it to be. If they want 24 by seven access to a technical support person and you don't have it as your company selling, then your service perception will drop as value in service drops. It reverts to the bottom two criteria which are price and convenience, which all things being equal make up about 13 percent of the whole sales process. However, if the value is not there at the top down, selling, what will happen is price will come up as a bigger objection. It'll come up as a bigger perception because that to them now, it will be the value,

[31:35]                                    and I'll tell you right now in this, in the industrial market, there's a drive to monetize or or commoditize everything commoditized, commoditized. If it's a, if it's a seal of a, you know, a mechanical seal. I'm buying price, I'm buying pr and it's an in that. That's the culture that exists today within the services. Important. Don't get me wrong if something breaks down and I don't have the part there, the next, you know, hour or whatever. Yeah, it's a big deal, but everything drive to the commoditization of that price

[32:12]                                    until your position at a human to human fashion and you're positioned as the expert because we all want to buy from an expert and we will pay more for that relationship very well. This is why the old statement like, you know, nobody got fired for buying from IBM, right? We know buying from IBM in those days, especially if they were going to be more money, we know buying from apple, they're typically going to be more money than going out and buying pc from a windows based pc. Why companies do that because of that value perception and and so you know, why do they buy service plans? Because they want those service plans to be part of the service. They don't want to worry, they don't want to be concerned and when a lot of people do is they're trying to just make a sale versus trying to make a sale with another human being in a wind when fashion, and this is where sales is going, it's not rare.

[33:04]                                    Sales might go, it's already going there and so those who don't understand that conversational ability in sales are going to be commoditized. It's that simple because people want to buy from people that they trust, they respect and preferably they like and they will pay more money and everyone that is listening on this line in some form fashion has bought something and paid a little bit more money or a lot more money for that same thing that they could have got somewhere else and it's, it doesn't matter if you go into a restaurant and you over paid for the meal, right? Compared to where you could have been out on the street and get the meal, same type of meal, but it's that experience that people are paying for. So in the restaurant, that's the value perception and you know, so and we have to take into consideration the human connection doubled the sales process.

[34:00]                                    Scott is very, very straightforward. We're going to generate a lead to drive it to a qualified or disqualified lead. We're then going to, if qualified, convert that lead, we are then going to then service that lead and in the process of that, we want to spawn new clients referrals. I endorsements testimonials and we want to loop back and get that whole process to regenerate itself over and over again. And if you do this right, you'll convert more just from your referrals. You can get referrals to be a major component of your actual base. And you know, referrals close quicker, faster, easier, if you will. They will close generally for higher price to worse and, uh, and, and more profit because there's that trust factor built right in and that commoditization begins to go out the window.

[34:51]                                    Okay, so let's, let's take a hypothetical here. I, I've, I've owned a company, uh, it's a industrial maintenance company. Uh, I've run another terminal company that was president of that and, and everything from my perspective, everything and I've lived through this is sales. It's just sales. And you get to the point where you're constantly looking at sales in the industrial market today, doug, we, we, we need to this whole conversation, will this position yourself as an expert doesn't happen overnight. And in fact, I think that we have been so ingrained within this industry. The culture of other industry is just once again, top down sales, but we don't, we just go, let's go play golf, let's, let's go fish and that type of stuff. In the industrial world, I mean it's, it's a where do we go? What do we do? How do you recognizing the, the dynamics of this market?

[35:52]                                    So the first thing and, and all the sales processes that you've got to get them into what I call yes dates. The whole process through sales is about creating micro commitments of yes states. So everything you do, you've got to get them to say yes, yes. Now, whether they're saying that out loud or in their head, you want to get that process. So we people buy for buying what I call buying confidence. They're confident that they're making the right purchase for them. That's the reason that they buy. They pull the trigger on the sale. Now, when they're in fear, imagine to pivot. So it needs a pivot in the middle and, and, and, uh, uh, an arm going across on one side of the, um, you have confidence on the other side of the, um, you have fear or pain. Well, anything that has said throughout that process has to make that pivot. Go up on the confidence level and down on fear, pain level. Now you can push pain during a sale. That's a different conversation to get them to move to the confidence. But imagine in the middle of that pivot, that pivot has a point on it where people make a really big challenging decision and they don't really realize what they're doing is they're trying to push them immediately from pain to confidence, but what they're forgetting, what they have to get them to. The middle of that pivot, in the middle of that pivot pivot is neutral

[37:19]                                    teeter totter and you got, it stays, it stays level and it's like you said, it's neutral. It's where the things just sort of stays level.

[37:26]                                    You gotta get it neutral first and then you gotta you gotTa let the fear side drop and the buying competence side go up. Interesting in the way you do that is through the power of questioning and those power of questioning, especially open ended questions where you can get people to talk, so you're building rapport and you're bonding with these people all the way through and the more you can get them to think, yes, this person is the person I want to do business with. Yes, this makes sense. Yes, that makes sense. The more that happens, that buying confidence goes up, one of the quickest ways of doing it in the industrial space is the position as an expert, but you position as an expert quickly by using what we call market data.

[38:06]                                    Uh, yes. Market debt. Yes. Yes. Interesting.

[38:12]                                    Yeah, because the market data sways the imagination. It positioned somebody as an expert before they even start pitching the process.

[38:21]                                    So you're just sort of dovetail with the market data is just like, ah, yeah, I did, you know, 27 percent believed x, Y, Z and that type of stuff.

[38:30]                                    Yeah. That's part of it, as long as it's backed up by credible sources. So, you know, when I'm talking to people about sales training, I'll put it into a, uh, into a state of something of this nature. I'm out of a 10 people, out of 10 people that you talked to or your sales team talks to, how many of them are followed up with at least 10 or more 10 or more times over the next 10 weeks?

[38:58]                                    Yes, he wrote a 10. How many of your current clients have been touched at least once a month? Over the next Blab, La personal phone calls? How many of your clients that have bought something but they're dormant or touched? Right? And we'll get these three, these three points. So in other words, how's your follow up rate? Because 50 percent of salespeople never follow up with a lead once. Only 13 percent of salespeople ever follow up with a lead more than three times. But statistics clearly show that the average sale in a cold lead takes five to eight. Sometimes 12 touches to actually get into the place where they're willing to even entertain talking about it and saying yes, so if it's not going to the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh touch, this is where a lot of is dropping out of the funnel. This is where profits dropping out of the funnel. He has that lead cost has been paid for it. All you have to do is monetize

[39:53]                                    and, and they just, they just give up. So you have to keep on saying, no, I don't like that. The, I don't like the sound of no.

[40:00]                                    Well exactly. And, and the interesting thing is they give up, but their competition is now coming in on the fourth, fifth. Yes.

[40:14]                                    They just dove too. They bogarted your dog on three touches and they're coming in at the fourth, fifth and sixth touch and they just, they've made their efforts more efficient.

[40:23]                                    Absolutely. Because what's happened is company a they gave up is actually making it their framing and their prepping the client to actually buy for company B or company c who comes in as the competitor.

[40:37]                                    Oh, I love it. Hey, we're going to have to take a break right now. Let's, uh, we're talking to Doug Brown. He's bright, he's dropping truth bombs right now. You industrial professional out there. We're talking about positioning yourself as an expert. We're talking about follow up. Do not stop with following up five, eight, sometimes 12 to get to that point where that potential customer will say, yeah, so you gotta listen to this guy. You got to follow up. You've got to find them out on linkedin. So hang tight. We're going to wrap this show up on the next side. So thank you very much for joining the industrial talk podcast. As always, please stay tuned. Hey, once again, this is Scott MacKenzie with industrial talk. If you like what you were listening to, please feel free to sign up for the free podcast as well as the blogs.

[41:24]                                    I'll try to keep it all relevant to your business and hopefully be able to provide some insight into what we do at industrial talk and what you do as a professional. Hope to see you soon. Thank you. All right, welcome back. We're try a and truth bombs here with Doug Brown, you know, he is. I mean, I got to tell you, doug, I've been enjoying this conversation, founder of a business success factors and you industrial professional as well as that company owner that's in the industrial space. I highly recommend this because things are changing. The Internet's not going away, and so you're going to have to learn to adapt. You're going to have to learn to be able to figure this out where you're going to, or your competition's going to do it and you're going to be left behind. And we don't want that to happen. So, Doug, you brought up a stat that was brought to you by HubSpot. Why don't you just share with everybody that that's sort of interesting stat,

[42:21]                                    a lot of research, right? Because, uh, again, data marketing is part of what, what I, I invoke as well. Um, and so, you know, I saw a, a stat published by HubSpot, which showed that a 10 percent minimum increase is achieved when people are in consistent training. So when salespeople or any, you know, uh, are inconsistent training, uh, they will outsell 10 percent at a minimum higher conversion then people, they're not training on a consistent basis. But the challenge is that most companies, many companies won't invest in that process because they think, well, Geez, you know, doing that, it's kind of an expense on the books. Um, but however I've seen statistics, statistics are much higher than this 10 percent remember that, uh, there was a study that was published by a personal public management, uh, which is a group who studies this and they found that highly regarded studies in, in, in other avenues as well as their studies showed that training will increase. Coaching training will increase, excuse me, um, people's conversion. But when you add coaching to that training, you can get as much as a full hundred percent increase in the results. Right? So,

[43:40]                                    well, that's great value, for lack of a better term. That's value.

[43:45]                                    Yeah, it's, it's, it's, you know. But the challenge with most people is they're not investing in themselves. The greatest investment that one can make is in there and then and their own selves as well as companies investing in their people. This is not the frame, just what I'm doing, Scott. It's true in what happens in all industries, especially in the industrial space because I've worked with a lot of people in the industrial space and it never ceases to amaze me. You know, we take a an underperforming sales person and we put them into a systematic training on how to sell and all of a sudden they go from 19th in the pecking order to number two within a you four, six month period and people all under what happened, what happened to Mary or what happened to date and it's just because they have a sale system.

[44:31]                                    So he had. The bottom line is this, the buyer has a system or your company has a sales system and if the company doesn't have a sales system that the salesperson's following that is effective, then the buyer system is going to win out. And the buyer system is this. I want to buy at the most economical play I can buy the most convenient play I can buy. That's their system and most of the time salespeople and not to be trusted, so unless that salesperson system is able to demonstrate the value and the service and high rapport, which is to overcome, if you will or at least mitigate that buyer system, the buyer system will prevail and that's what happens in a lot of the industrial space and that's why they get commoditized.

[45:21]                                    Yeah, you're spot on. You're speaking truth, my friend. You are speaking truth now for you listeners out there, when he started to talk a little bit about that stat that HubSpot, HubSpot is a email marketing CRM. That's a customer relationship management system out there that creates a. If it gives you tremendous flexibility and automation touchpoint follow up everything that you could possibly imagine. So that stat is real because hubspot is a real company. Now, Doug, I hate to call it to call it quits, but I have to call it quits, but how do people get Ahold of you? And by the way, just, I'm going to back up a little bit, everybody out there, I sent my salesforce to a sales training, uh, uh, uh, event out there, spent a lot of money. You know what I did wrong, I didn't follow up, I didn't change the culture and Doug here it talks about and he recognizes that the necessity and the ability to be able to provide that training, but to be able to follow it over a period of time, that's results, that's Roi. So if you're on the fence about, well, do I need to do some sales training? It's Roi, it's bottom line value and it, it improves your business, revenue, margin, whatever you want to do and makes people far more passionate about your business. So Doug, how do they get ahold of you?

[46:42]                                    Well, they can always go to my website, which is business success factors.com. They can send me an email directly to Doug@businesssuccessfactors.com. And that's factors with an s. The reason that the SSD is not one factor. It's multiple factors that make your business successful. Man, remember that out there. Good. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm pretty good about getting back to people, uh, if, if I'm not readily available, one of my assistants will get back and then we can have a conversation.

[47:15]                                    You're also out on LinkedIn and you're Doug Brown. One, two, three, by the way. Yes, I am. So Doug Brown, one, two, three because Doug Brown, I would imagine as a fairly common name out there on LinkedIn, right?

[47:25]                                    It very much is. I mean it's a very common name across a lot of ways. So say my name is Doug Brown. People go, uh, yeah, really? Who are you really? James Smith right now. But

[47:37]                                    if there's, if there's a beef out there on these social platforms, it's a fact that when you come across a Doug Brown, you just realize you just, your stomach sinks a little bit and you're going, okay, I'm going to have to. I'm gonna have to find this. Jim. I'm going to have to do

[47:50]                                    right now. Those people are still. They could always call at area code six. Oh, three, five, nine, five, zero, three, zero three. And I'm extension seven, zero one. So the bottom line is this, that Oh, by the way, Scott, you know, I have no one to three in my name.

[48:11]                                    I don't know. It makes it easier to find Doug Brown,

[48:15]                                    one, two, three actually came about because, you know, I'm a salesperson and I've been a, usually a top performer in most companies and I started studying this. And the reality is that salespeople, they don't want to do any more than three modes to make something happen now. Yeah. So

[48:35]                                    another party truth bomb. My Gosh, that's good man.

[48:38]                                    Right? So when you're designing your sales system, those of you who have companies are wanting to design a system, make it so there's no more maximum three moves that the salesperson has to achieve. And if you do that, that salesperson will do that much more often because they are looking for an Roi. They got to do eight moves, it slows them down, and then they're like, hey, I can't make five calls. Right? So not going to do it. Good stuff, my friend. That's how it came about.

[49:08]                                    All right, well let me see. I just want one last thing. I see that because I'm all about education, right? And I'm big into books and I know that you're getting a book getting ready to be released because I think that, uh, as I look behind me, I don't have one of you, but you said that you're going to get a book, right?

[49:25]                                    I actually written several books and I don't see anyone behind me that says Doug Brown on there one time had been the guy behind the scenes and then I decided to step out and claimed my space through the urging of a lot of lot of people. Um, and so I'm grateful to them. And so I wanted to write a book that was specifically on a subject matter like I didn't want to bring out just to generalize, you know, how do you create sales systems in your business and a lot of books out there, that type of thing. So I decided to write about one of the biggest pain points that salespeople have a other than how to get leads. How do you handle objections? What is the psychology? What is the human dynamics behind why objections form how they form, because they they formed way back in our childhood. A lot of people don't realize this, so I wrote a book specifically on how to resolve objections without crushing your prospect and the prospect a that

[50:27]                                    top down approach that we in the industrial world, a dike that really tried to employ

[50:35]                                    that book will be coming out. It's actually right now with a publisher and the publisher's putting the final touches on it. If somebody wants access to the book, just send me an email and say, hey, when the book comes out, you know, uh, you'll be one of the first pre-releases and, uh, you know, we'll, we'll do something special for you on the book here. Your listeners,

[50:57]                                    Doug, thank you very much. Really appreciate your time, energy, effort, and your wisdom, big time for the industrial taka listeners. And once again, I'm going to be summarizing all of this up, sticking it out on industrial [inaudible] dot com. You will have every bit of information on how to get ahold of God, his email, his phone, his LinkedIn, his website, and I highly recommend that you take him up on his offer to get that book because I know that when I hear rejection, I run away. Is that part of my childhood? There can be week we get together, my friend. Thank you very much and thank you for joining the industrial a talk podcast. We will be right back. You're listening to the industrial talk podcast network.

[51:54]                                    Alright, that was Doug Brown. Thank you very much Doug, for joining the industrial talk podcast. I know that I'm a better man. I. I mean I'm passionate about sales marketing, branding. You brought a lot of truth to that. I enjoyed that quite a bit. Thank you very much because you are a busy man. Thank you for sharing with the industrial talk listeners and also remember the best investment is the investment in yourself. Gum to the industrial talk podcast. We're going to continue to try to provide as much content as we possibly can and that segues into the industrial academy. Does we? Academy is out there, take that, pull that industrial poll, click boom, free access to it. You get to learn a lot more about that digital marketing, which is very important, and then finally industrial heroes right there. Anybody that provides me with an industrial area gets this wonderful pat swag, industrial talks, swag. So anyway, thank you very much. Thank you for participating in the industrial talk podcasts. You can get ahold of me out at. Of course, the website. It does talk dot Com. I got a Facebook account. It does real talk. I've got a LinkedIn out there, both my personal, Scott MacKenzie and my company industrial talk, twitter, Instagram, and a YouTube channel because this is where this is going to be too, so thank you very much. Have a great day. Be Safe as always, and we will be back.

 

The post EP 059: How To Increase Your Industrial Sales? Listen to Doug Brown and He will Make Your 2019 a Success! appeared first on The Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott MacKenzie.