Doug C. Brown is a highly acclaimed Sales Revenue Growth Expert and international bestselling author. He has coached, consulted, and advised thousands of people in business as well as companies including Enterprise-Rent Car, Nationwide, Intuit, Proctor and Gamble, CBS television, and others.
He has collected an impressive amount of experience throughout his life in different fields, especially sales. During this period, he created over 35 companies.
Doug served as an independent President of Sales and Training for Tony Robbins, Chet Holmes, Russ Whitney, and others.
He has generated over $500 million in sales; his last client made $3 million in 5 weeks. His most outstanding professional achievement is increasing the company’s close rate by 862% and their revenue growth by 116% in four months.
His mission is to help companies grow their sales revenue and to have better performing sales teams. Additionally, he instructs B2B coaches and consultants on how to build a more profitable business.
Doug is a 12-year veteran of the US Army and a proud father of two wonderful daughters.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up writing a book?
I started working at the age of three for my father’s business, sweeping floors for $0.25 cents a week. By age 5 and ½, I was put in front of clients to help them buy a product or service from my dad’s company. Over my lifetime, I’ve went on to start and/or build over 35 businesses – in which time, I grew to understand that the two most difficult things for people in business is to get a qualified lead and to know how to convert that lead into a paying client.
I wrote my book so that people can learn how to communicate better, to get a lead, and to be able to close it without conflict. That is why I called it Win-Win-Selling, because both parties, the buyer and the seller, win when this is done right.
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
That objections are a part of daily communications and can be resolved. This also applies to people who are not sales professionals, as interpersonal relationships are strengthened due to better communication skills.
I also hope that readers take away that many of the conflicts and fears that arise from communicating with another human being start from their early ages of human-to-human scripting. Once that scripting is realized, they can reframe their current way of active-passive and active-destructive communication, which leads to conflict. Additionally, I hope that this book provides people with happier days in their lives as well as more sales.
What were the top mistakes you made writing/publishing your book?
One of the biggest mistakes that I made was trying to make the book perfect when good was good enough. I spent a lot of time trying to make it perfect instead of putting out information that would help people more quickly – this resulted in the book taking me a year and a half to write.
My next mistake was not releasing the book right away, because it took an additional year and a half to release it. If I had released the book two years prior, I could have probably helped a lot more people.
When publishing the book, my biggest mistake was working with a publisher who wasn’t familiar with my audience or the way people in my industry think. Therefore, I spent a lot of unnecessary time and energy trying to get the book right for the publisher instead of focusing on providing more value for the readers. Once I moved from a publisher to a self-publishing platform, the content in my book flowed effortlessly and became more valuable to the reader, which is one reason the book became well-received and an international best-seller.
Don’t be a perfectionist! Your first draft may not be perfect, but it will include valuable information. Hold yourself to one rewrite, and then let your editor clean it up. Too many authors try to make it perfect and take too much time writing the book itself.
The second piece of advice is to be clear on how you’re going to leave the reader of your book better off. Ask yourself – “how is someone better off after reading this book?” Start building your outline and writing from that point. Be sure to get clear on it as this will allow you to focus your content on that endpoint.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before publishing your first book?
That there are other people who have better skillsets than I do in writing and publishing a book. I spent an enormous amount of unnecessary time, money, and energy trying to figure this all out by myself, thinking that I needed to understand the whole process. In reality, I needed to find the right people to guide me through the process.
Promoting a book without selling it is useless. When promoting the book, we used affiliate relationships that already had trust built into the affiliate relationship from their buyers. Guest podcasting also helped. We also created a quiz and used it to engage people to find out what their objections handling style is, and their result led to the offer of the book. We ramped up PR as well which proved to be useful.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
I wouldn’t have invested so much time into college – I would have learned more life and communication skills. The reason for this is that no matter what job, career path, or business pursuits we take, we must be able to communicate with people for a win-win outcome, and in a way that they need to be communicated with. Without this skill set, we can have PHD’s and numerous degrees and still fall short. I also would’ve learned and studied more financial literacy and how to use financial methodology to talk with those who had money and access to others with money.
If you only had $1000 dollars to promote a new book, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would invest in building relationships with others who have targeted affiliate relationships because these people already have a built-in and trusted list of buyers. I would contact podcast hosts and bloggers to see about guest appearances on their show or blog, and I would contact all of my past relationships. I would use some of the money to celebrate, too 😊
What is your favorite quote?
“The best way to predict your future is to create it”
– Abraham Lincoln.
No matter what I’ve done in my life, whether it was building over 35 companies or writing this book, I’ve worked hard for it. Lincoln’s quote serves as a great reminder to stop talking and start doing. Our time is limited, so I believe that there is no better time than now to begin creating your future and legacy.
How can we get in touch with you?
You can contact me at doug@businesssuccessfactors.com. My website is BusinessSuccessFactors.com and you can also connect with me on LinkedIn.
Author Interview: Joseph A. Michelli – Ten Books and Stronger Through Adversity
