Sales expert Doug Brown reveals the math-based system that turns unpredictable revenue into steady, repeatable growth — built for solopreneurs and SMB owners ready to stop guessing.
GROWTH PILLAR: Sales & Revenue
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A repeatable sales framework, practical follow-up strategies, and a clear understanding of the metrics that drive consistent revenue growth.
Doug Brown solves one problem: unpredictable sales. If your revenue spikes and crashes no matter how hard you work, this episode is your reset.
Doug Brown is the CEO of CEO Sales Strategies. He spent decades building and fixing sales systems for companies like Intuit, CBS, and Procter & Gamble. He served as independent president of sales and training for Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes, where he boosted close rates by 143% and grew a product line by over 4,000% in six months. He has helped generate over $960 million in sales across more than 35 businesses.
In this episode of Knack 4 Business, Doug walks through the mindset shift that changed everything — breaking the limbic cycle that keeps most sellers stuck in fear and reaction mode. He explains why master prospectors always outsell master closers, how to build six high-performing lead activities and automate them, and why the data inside your sales ratios is telling you exactly what to fix.
Doug also introduces VidBitno, his AI-powered follow-up platform designed to keep relationships warm, re-engage dormant clients, and ensure no sale falls through the cracks while you're away from your desk.
Key topics covered:
Free gift from Doug: Get his 2X Methodology video course free at ceosalesstrategies.com/2xm
Connect with Doug:
Co-host: Wayne Pratt
This episode is brought to you by:
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Bernie (00:05)
So a question for the audience. Are you tired of unpredictable sales and wondering why your revenue keeps spiking and crashing no matter how hard you work? That's exactly what our speaker will impact today. He'll share how to build a reliable math-driven sales system that creates consistent growth, steadier cashflow, and more confident selling without the burnout. If this hits home, stay with us because Doug, our guest, will walk you through the mindset
systems and simple steps that can help you double your sales with far less stress. Speaking of our guest, Doug Brown, CEO of CEO Sales Strategies. He is a leading expert in the sales revenue and profit growth known for creating predictable math based system that helps businesses and independent sellers reliably increase sales. Former military serviceman, he went on to serve as the independent president of sales and training for Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes.
where he boosted team close rates by 143 % and grew a product line by over 4,000 % in just six months. Across his career, Doug has built or supported more than 35 businesses, helping generate over 960 million in sales for companies ranging from household brands like Intuit, CBS, and Procter & Gamble to thousands of entrepreneurs. He's earned top sales honors, led high performing teams and created award-winning development programs.
Doug has also launched VidBitno, a sales automation platform designed to increase conversions, retain clients and help businesses double their sales through smarter follow-up and daily performance tracking. After four decades of mastering business growth and personal development, he continues to teach others how to win more clients with simple, measurable systems. He
lives in New Hampshire and with his wife, two daughters, and outside of his business, he's a passionate musician who has even sold gear to artists like Aerosmith, the Eagles, and Boston. that is Doug. Wow, congrats. And that alone just kind of plucks my strings. Sir, welcome. Good to have you here.
Doug (02:03)
⁓ Bernie, thank you. And Wayne, thank you for having me here. I'm very grateful to be here with you guys.
Bernie (02:08)
So do you have a favorite quarter saying that you like to use?
Doug (02:11)
You know, I do. It's not always that positive, but it's like, know, every day you wake up, you have an opportunity, but usually what you want to do is going to take you twice as long ⁓ as you figure it's going to, you know, that's kind of my motto. make room for it so you don't be stressed out throughout.
Bernie (02:26)
Perfect. So you had a mindset shift for everything that generating predictable sales. What triggered that? was it, it, was it an epiphany where you're sitting there going, what's going on? I don't understand to, uh-huh.
Doug (02:39)
Yeah, it was a little more, I think a little more, um, aggressive than, you know, when, when you're working with high performers, they're, they're looking for results very quickly. And, and, know, I, in my own business would, do the same thing. It wasn't coming as fast as, uh, I wanted it to, or sometimes even, uh, clients wanted it to. then, so, you know, you get to a real.
Doug (02:45)
So
and
Doug (03:05)
breaking point of frustration. But then what I started realizing was it's actually not the strategies of the information, the education, or even the application of the strategies. A lot of times within the sales team members or within the leadership or even within myself at the time when I was looking at my own businesses, I realized that there's something holding up that isn't actually mechanical. It's actually on the other side of the human being, which is
A lot of people are locked up in the limbic system in their brain. They're in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode. So I started doing a little research on there and I realized that the limbic system actually works a lot faster than the prefrontal cortex of our brain. And the prefrontal cortex is the reasoning side of our brain. But when we're, so like the limbic system takes like one 200th of a second to activate from stimulants. But it takes,
Doug (03:36)
And.
Doug (03:57)
second or two for the prefrontal cortex to kick in. So when we're constantly using the limbic system of our brain first, and we're really emphatic, like, you know, I'm sure this is it. I'm absolutely positive. This is it. We actually persuade our prefrontal cortex to agree with us. And this is what gets people into challenge mode. And a lot of this comes from their childhood stemming all the way through, but that, that was the epiphany moment for me. was like,
⁓ if I can break this limbic cycle for people and get them into the creative side to perhaps we can or perhaps this should go in a different way. Then we were starting to get really great results because it was, it was far more collaborative for everybody. And they weren't afraid to actually do it.
Doug (04:28)
And.
Wayne (04:40)
Doug, you may, I've been around motivational training and trainers now 40 years and Tony Robbins is probably the most universally loved and hated of the whole bunch. Tell me about your, your, your time with him and what he left you with.
Doug (04:51)
Shh.
Doug (04:56)
So I learned a lot from Tony. ⁓ you know, I'm very grateful. I had that experience. I kind of pinched myself when it first started happening. Cause Tony was a, ⁓ you know, there was a time in my life where I was just frustrated and nothing was really going right. And then it's like two o'clock in the morning and I'm watching television and this big guy with this, you know, big teeth came on and he's like, Hey, I'm Tony Robbins. And, know, here's my personal power to course. And, know,
Doug (05:16)
and
Doug (05:22)
you know, or personal power, I think it was then, ⁓ I'm like sitting there going, well, I've spent 250 bucks on stupider ideas than this. So I ordered the, ⁓ the, the series and I went through it and it literally started reframing how I started thinking. When I got to work with him, you know, it's, I got to observe him and I would be able to observe like when he was on stage, for example,
Doug (05:25)
And
And
Doug (05:46)
I would go to a Tony Robbins event, me personally, ⁓ not just for the content and the fun and all the shift, but I learned from him from what's he doing on stage and how is he positioning here? And he's a master at doing that. think Tony's one of the best, if not the best salespeople in the world when it comes down to it. He's got all the characteristics from caring all the way to the empathy to the expertise and
knows how to disengage when it's not right for people and knows how to actually help them cross that barrier of fear into that buying confidence area. So I learned a lot of that from Tony by watching him while I was there. And I think the single most transformative lesson from that experience was, you know, he used to always talk about Kanae, constant and never ending improvement. ⁓
Doug (06:36)
and
Doug (06:37)
Constant and never-ending improvement is really what I built my life on because another gentleman, Alan Weiss, said to me one day, Doug, if you'd mathematically do the numbers 1 % better every day in 70 days, you're twice as good. And so I went out and I brought it out all year long and I said, well, that's 36, 37X, right? So if we just get incrementally better every day,
That's why I tell people, look, this is probably gonna take you twice as long as you figure it's going to, and maybe cost you twice as much as you figure. But if you get better at it every single day, then you will prevail. The reason people don't get what they want most of the time is because they quit. And so that's what I learned from Tony was, I'm still grateful to this day to have had that experience.
Wayne (07:20)
One of the things I find when people have come from corporate space and so you have sessions where hi, this is a way to address something, whether it's an improvement piece, way to manage people, et cetera. And you sit there and whether it's one hour or it's an eight hour session and then you walk away, everything's fresh in your mind. And then as time wears on, it just kind of tapers down, right? There's a bit of a, some things might still latch.
How do you sustain like, you you have a say a Tony Robbins event, right? It's high energy. You're in it. You're in the moment. You got the flow. Two weeks down pipe. How do you, you know, how do you hold onto enough that you can have that incremental change? What do do to make that stick?
Doug (08:04)
Well, it's repetition, right? It's repetition to agnosium really when it comes down to it. So that's where a lot of people kind of drop the drop the process. so because we, we retain a, know, we'll lose half of what we learned within, you know, a couple of days, right? We just won't remember, you know, if anybody's like, no, no, I have the greatest memory. That's cool. You're better than most. But if I said to you, you know,
Doug (08:16)
And
Doug (08:32)
today's the 12th of November, what did you have for lunch the third of November? Most people couldn't recall that quickly. But if you reminded yourself, hey, I had whatever for lunch, fish for lunch on every day, you reminded yourself and somebody asks you that question, you'd be able to recall it very quickly. So when you leave an event like that, or if you leave a book
or whatever you're trying to learn something, don't just put it down and then just move on to the next thing. You wanna go back and what are the lessons I've learned from here and how do I apply that? And that's why accountability is really important in life for all of us because we show up, suit up and do the deal over and over over over again. And that's how to reinforce that. So, when I was in the military, for example,
You know, when you first pick up, you know, the, the weapon in the, know, back then we had steel helmets, right? So you stick your stick, your helmet, they call it a steel pot. So you stick it on your head. It is so heavy. Like your neck is bubbling around like crazy. It's you look like one of those little dogs in the back of a window where the neck is, you know, going up and down, you know, not real dogs, folks, the little toy dog and, you know, but.
Doug (09:31)
And
⁓
Doug (09:47)
by your sixth week, you're walking around and going, I don't even feel this thing. You know, know, it's on your head, but you're no longer bobbling around. That's because you've been training your, your neck every day, your muscles to be, get stronger and stronger. It's the same process. They used to do that with their, where our weapons, you know, I mean, we would disassemble and reassemble those weapons and rain, snow, sleet, hail, freezing weather, hot weather, you know,
in every situation and you know, I could pull that apart and put it back together, you know, within very, very short period of time. The reason you do that is because that practice of repetition, commits it to habit, commits it to memory so that when you need to be able to do it, you're reflexive, not actually having to think through it. And so when you're in sales and selling or building a business and you know what to do.
Doug (10:21)
and
Doug (10:39)
Somebody says something, you're like, I've heard this 15 times. Here's how I'm gonna handle this coming back. You're confident about it. And that's what creates this confidence is repetition and accountability.
Wayne (10:50)
I have found in both being in sales and teaching sales is there's a search for a client, find a client, service a client, bill a client, start over and hate your life. That seems to be endless. And if you really broke that code, I need to marry you. So tell me.
Doug (11:10)
Firstly, I don't think my wife would allow it even though you're a cute guy, right?
Wayne (11:14)
Wrong podcast, wrong podcast.
Doug (11:16)
That's funny. So, you know, here's the thing. Now the question is, do you hate your life because you're in this constant up and down swing? So if that's the case, the way out of this is you've got to create what we call high performing activities that were automated. In other words, master prospectors will always outsell the master closers and master prospectors always have an abundance of leads that are qualified coming through to them.
Doug (11:24)
⁓
Doug (11:43)
If, in most cases when people are not feeling happy about, know, cause they're having peaks and valleys and peaks and valleys in their income, the way to smooth that out is we've got to create, think about a lead as a wave coming into the shore. And, but the wave starts way out somewhere in the lake or the sea or wherever. The more you can have those waves come in at a steady reputation, repetition.
Doug (12:01)
in the
And
then
Doug (12:10)
and
you will not feel the bite of that process. What most people don't do is they don't schedule out time to force the prospecting to happen. And so what ends up happening is they see highs and lows in their income cycle because let's say an average consulting deal takes three months to close, right? Just from the time you initiate it to three months. Well,
Doug (12:21)
And
Doug (12:35)
means for every three months, you're not going to see something unless you have something that started within the cycle that drops in the third week of the third month, if you will. mean, third week of that series of the 12 weeks, right? So that's why we want to have steady, steady, steady prospecting. And we recommend that you have six new ways over a year that you turn those into high-performing activities, i.e. those are the producing results.
and then find ways to automate those activities as much as possible, at least on the front end, so that you can have qualified conversations, which will lead to more selling and more sales.
Wayne (13:11)
This whole model is math based. So if a company is starting out and they're back going, okay, I'm selling widgets, or I'm selling a service, I'm a coach. What should they look at from a math perspective going to the numbers? What should they focus on first as a start point?
Doug (13:28)
Well, if we're talking about independent professionals, Bernie, like, you know, coach or consultant or something like that, we want to look at the number of outreaches we're making every single day to start out first. I mean, the first place to start is the real truthful number. What do you actually want? Because most people are really not clear on that. And then what's our cost per sale and what's the cost, you know, how much do we want to take home? Really? That's what we want to figure out and then build a plan around that.
But once you're there, you just measure how many outbound activities or outbound reaches you're doing, right? I am reaching out to somebody, well, okay, great. How many of those outreaches results in a connection? And how many of those connections returns a positive response? And how many of those positive responses go into appointments?
How many of those appointments actually become sales? How many of those sales become follow-up sales? How many of those follow-up sales or sales becomes an increased buying frequency? Whether they buy from you more than once or you get a referral from and expand the sale through your existing relationship, or you increase the transactional value by selling them something else at the time of sale or you upsell them or something of that nature. And how many times are you following up to re-engage that process? If we just...
kind of focused on those metrics alone, those start to tell you a story. So, you know, if you're outreaching a lot, let's say you're outreaching 300 times a day through automated methodologies, through making phone calls, but your connection rate is near zero. Well, there's a reason for that. And we've got to investigate what that process, you know, what is the reason
Maybe it is the process we're using. Maybe we don't have our ideal right fit buyer. Maybe our messaging is so terrible that, you know, we're reaching out for, you know, sword lessons, you know, and, no one's interested in, you know, or we're reaching out for fencing, let's say, right? there's, you know, we're, we're intending to do sword lessons, but
Doug (15:25)
And
Doug (15:29)
Nobody's responding to us because they're looking for, you know, picket fencing, right? It's the same word, if you will. So I'm going to bring it
Wayne (15:37)
I had already jumped that fence. Being from Eastern Ontario, I had already gone there. Jumped that fence? You already jumped it? Oh, double pun. Oh, bad, Wayne. Bad.
Doug (15:45)
That's awesome guys. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's, there's reasons like if we had these connections and we got a lot of connections, but they're all negative responses, let's say, well, we know that our messaging, but let's say we got a lot of positive responses, but we couldn't get any appointments or we get our appointment setting ratios low. Well, again, it might be in the messaging, you know, I had a business called telecom auditing group.
where we would audit phone bills and consult on the telecommunication space. We averaged 24 and a half percent savings across the board for our clients, not changing carriers. just talked with AT &T at the time or talk with MCI at the time. That's how long this there was, for those of you who met MCI, you know, and I would readjust their bill because there's always billing errors and mistakes.
but we were only getting like one in five who were actually converting with the message, hey, I'll do all of this. You don't have to pay me. We just take a percentage of the savings. was driving me crazy because I'm like, who wouldn't want to take their $10,000 a month bill down to $7,500 a month? Right? And so one day I started asking questions of people who didn't buy. And then I started calling people and say, I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm doing marketing research.
This is what I do. Tell me why you wouldn't buy this. And they all started telling me the same things. anytime you make billing changes on our phone bill, sometimes that creates a service interruption and we would lose more money by the service interruption than we'd save on the phone bill, so to speak. Or, I'm a hospital and if you knock down our telecommunications, we have government regulations that are good. All these things were coming up and I'm like, ⁓ okay.
So then what I did is I led with a different line and I came out of the gate saying, if I didn't knock you out of service at a guaranteed rate of 99.975 % of the time, and I could reduce your phone bill by 24 and a half percent, would you want to talk about this? My close rate went from 20 % to 71%. And so.
This is the reason you measure these ratios because the ratios start to tell you a story on how you can improve and optimize the process.
Wayne (17:55)
I find interesting is that you have things you've learned where there's low hanging fruit. Some of our listeners have ADD, they only give us seven seconds. So if you're going to give us seven seconds, tell me a low cost sales improvement strategy or no cost sales improvement strategy that they could put in immediately and see 30 % improvement.
Doug (18:19)
Well, I can't guarantee 30%, but I can guarantee improvement. Right? So most people are neglecting two, two major factors in that regard. Number one, their dormant clients, people who have bought from them and they haven't re-engaged those clients in a long time. Just go back to your dormant clients and start talking to them. People who have bought from you in the past that you frankly haven't been communicating with. There are sales sitting there for you in most cases.
⁓ the second thing is, bloody well follow up as it said in England, right? So, because most people are not following up. In fact, you know, statistically half the people, don't follow up with people even after a meeting, which is crazy. so just improve your follow-up ratios and your skills and you'll pick up business. and this is notorious in certain industries here in the U S like the trades business for sure. Like any service based.
know, roofing company, air conditioning company, you know, any, anything like that. They just, I don't know, they just feel like they don't need to do it because maybe they got enough business coming in for some of these people. But you know, when you, when you, when you're doing ridiculous numbers, like 17 quotes, and you're not following up on these quotes and you know, half of them would close.
you know, going back to your original question, you know, why would I wake up every day and hate my life, so to speak? Well, maybe if you just followed up folks, you wouldn't have to have that, you you'd close more, right? Because follow-up is a constructive personal need of human beings. In other words, we all want to feel like we matter. And so follow-up is a common courtesy. You know, guys, I used to do this thing live. I'd be on a, in an audience and I'd say,
Doug (19:44)
⁓
Doug (19:56)
to the women in the audience, I'd say, you just went out on the perfect date.
Doug (19:59)
And...
Doug (19:59)
And how long does that person that you went out on the perfect date have to call you before they are burnt toast?
Number one answer was within 24 hours. Right?
Doug (20:11)
And I actually
Doug (20:12)
had women sometimes, evidently they've had some trauma around this, but they would stand up. I've had a couple stand up and go, I didn't have a guy call me for five days. If he called me now, I'd toss him off a bridge. So it's like, okay, so it's common courtesy. It shows you care. Those are two quick things you can do. Do them at clients and improve your follow-up.
Doug (20:25)
It sounds like...
Wayne (20:36)
You ever find that people over sell features and as opposed to decide here's the value.
Doug (20:42)
Yeah, I think they over sell them because they have nothing else Bernie, like they're trying to sell versus listening to the person, listening to the company, listening to the people. If you're doing a multi-person sale, you know, they queue in on one person, go, yeah, well I would like X. And then they go, this feature of this and this feature of that and this feature of this, right? But they're never asking, you know, what does this feature actually do or mean to you? What are you actually looking to accomplish? What is the end goal?
What's the problem here we're trying to solve? What's the opportunity we're trying to gain? And so, yeah, they sell features because they don't understand the basics of human communication, which is, you know, two people in a conversation is a dialogue. One person is a monologue. you know, there are times that features are important to even bring forth, but most of the time, you know, when I'm selling, especially, I'm not even talking about
Doug (21:13)
And
Doug (21:36)
features, unless we're talking about the value, but one step further, what does the value actually mean to them? What's the perception of their value of the value? That's what they buy.
Wayne (21:48)
So when you have, cause in the bio there's something about 4,000 % in six months. So on a product line. obviously something shifted gears. What were a couple of things that you did that made that light bulb pop and then all of a sudden, you know, scream up like an F16 taking off from, you know, straight up.
Doug (22:10)
Yeah, I looked at the data, number one. So, you know, the, so they had a product set called the sales mastery system and they were selling eight of those a month and they were selling it for, if I recall correctly was eight 99. So $900 ish somewhere around there.
Doug (22:31)
And
Doug (22:31)
I was like, why are we only selling nine of these things? Like it made no sense, or eight of these things a month, you know, made no sense to me. So I looked at the data and I could see that
on our leads that were coming through, that the majority of the companies coming through were under $300,000. They were pitching them all a $4,000 program. Less than 1 % of those $300,000 companies were actually buying the $4,000 program. All of the companies that bought the
Doug (22:50)
and
and
Doug (23:04)
No, it was a $800 program.
Doug (23:07)
⁓
Doug (23:08)
All of the companies that bought that 899 program were under 300,000. So I started asking myself this question, why are we pitching $4,000 programs to people who are buying at less than 1 % and 70 % of our lead base is under $300,000? This is the value in looking at the data because then you can start to ask questions to tell you the story.
So just like I did in the telecom business, I called up the clients that didn't buy and I was calling up people who could potentially buy this. And I'd said, why, why didn't you buy? Right. And they all told me this very similar thing. you know, I just don't want another digital course. And back then it was on a DVD. I don't want another DVD course with workbooks. I really want to talk to a human being. And so I said, well, you know, tell me what the price point was that you were thinking. And they'd say, well,
I love the price point. could go higher. so, you know, you know, around $1,500 or so us, right? That's what they were telling me. And I said, ⁓ okay, great. Well, tell you what, if I put some group coaching in here, six weeks of group coaching, would that be a benefit? You'd be able to come every single week and talk to a human being and get everything answered. And they said, sure. So I put it together and I raised the price to $1,450.
Doug (24:23)
and
Doug (24:23)
in our first week, not first week, in our first month, now remember they only sold eight a month on average. In our first month, we sold 108 of them. In our second month, we sold 235. In our third month, we sold 353, if I remember correctly. In our fourth month, we sold almost 500. Now remember, so we've got 500 sales going on now.
Doug (24:46)
Okay.
Doug (24:50)
at $1,450 versus eight sales at $900. And it just kept going. so, you know, some months we were up in the 600s, you know, and it just kept going up and up and up. It was all because I looked at the data and I just started asking questions. You know, that literally made, you know, tens of millions of dollars over time in the process. So.
That's how that product set came about and how that increase of, think the number was 4,152 % on average, on the increase.
Wayne (25:26)
Doug, you strike that you're roughly the same age as me. That's a guess, but I'm guessing you were raised in the 60s. And all of us remember being on a telephone tree where you heard an automated voice and you pressed buttons and you did magic things and you hoped that death would come and that it would release you from this call. And now we talk to consultants and they're telling the truth.
Doug (25:36)
It.
Wayne (25:54)
that optimization is the future. What the switch where somebody dreaded AI and phone trees to man, this will really help me build business and make the client happier. What flipped that switch and how are you a part of that?
Doug (26:09)
So it's a, it's an awesome question, Wayne, because I'm not so sure that the last part of that point of the question is actually true. makes the client happier. Right. It's, mean, we're all get stuck. I mean, I just had the hospitals are doing this drives me crazy. Right. You get stuck in these branching trees and you're not feeling well. It's like, well.
Doug (26:20)
⁓
⁓
And...
Doug (26:33)
fill out this form and do this upfront and do that upfront. And it's all automated. They're like trying to do the automation. And it's like, well, I have a question. And it's like, yeah, do this, do that, right? So I'm not so sure that walking through the grocery aisle and having an AI bot, you know, not be there to help you human being when you can't ring through, you know, I don't know, cucumbers or something, right? I mean, it's like,
But the reason that people are doing this is because when you look at profit in any company, you look at raising revenues and profits. If you can lower expense.
Doug (27:01)
you
than
Doug (27:11)
you get higher profitability, you know, just numerically, human beings working are expensive. And so you put something in that works 24 hours a day, doesn't complain, doesn't get sick, doesn't, whatever, and can do those routine jobs. You now increase your productivity, maybe, but you certainly increased your profit. And so I think people now are more used to
doing this because it's forced upon them. But I don't really think most people still, unless it's a very simple exchange, they don't really, you know, what causes the internet, right? The internet, when the internet came about, it made it proliferated, the ability to find information. And then that information is now synthesized into what people are looking for. And then people are getting the experience they want. And I personally think,
It is kind of creating a hell of a lot of tension in the world for people that they don't necessarily want.
Doug (28:07)
⁓
Doug (28:08)
I think the convenience of it when it works is great, but when you can't get an airline flight out and you've got to talk to a machine who keeps routing you round and round and round, or ask you for this piece of information and what's your frequent flyer number and you don't even have it and it won't let you go further. I don't think that's happened. But I think a lot of these companies that are really embracing this in that mass manner, they look at it as, okay, if we lose
4,000 clients today, we gained 4,500, we're more profitable, right? So I think it just depends on the industry that you're using it in.
know, the medical doctors, when you're walking in now, they're like, can we record this conversation so AI can transcribe it and stick it in the notes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? They get a lot of pushback on that right now.
Doug (28:56)
⁓
Doug (28:56)
You I understand it, so I don't care personally, but I think this, constant, you know, instant gratification thing is just amping up the world where people are more stressed and stressed and stressed. And, know, I sound like I'm on my soapbox, maybe complaining, but the reality is you keep amping up the stress and you you add inflation on top of the stress and all these things that are happening.
Doug (29:15)
and
Doug (29:19)
people get tense and they start doing things like driving 40 miles an hour over the speed limit, you know, as a normal thing, right? That type of thing. So I'm a big proponent of AI, but I also think that it needs to be actually in check. And again, why don't we ask the people what they want versus trying to stuff it down their throats and,
AI is nothing to fear, it's just another technology. mean, you you talked about when we were in the sixties, you had this automated thing that you get stuck in, right? And, you know, you'd be on hold with AT &T for 45 minutes trying to get something resolved.
Doug (29:52)
⁓
Doug (29:53)
I think there's a place for all of this, prior to the automated phone, people thought television was never gonna be what it is today. And movie theaters were the biggest thing, but now they're not, because streaming is, right? So it's just another technology. The ATM took 13 years for people to actually go, okay, this won't eat my money. So I think in time when the AI kind of shakes itself out,
We're fortunately or unfortunately in that time where it's being all shaken up at this point. You know, there's no way I'm getting in a self-driving car at this point. I don't trust it. Right. Personally. And you know, it's been shown it's already run people over and, know, ⁓ you know, because it just, you know, but in time, think that self-driving cars will probably become the standard, right? We'll, we'll see. I hope I'm answering your question.
Doug (30:41)
⁓
Wayne (30:44)
Well, you can't leave me here, Doug. You've laid it out clearly that there are pain points and we both knew that. But tell me you have a solution and I don't want to mispronounce it, so you're going to pronounce it. Tell me how Vibie thing is going to fix it.
Doug (30:58)
this.
So the bit no. Yeah. So the bit no. Okay. So my wife, she is originally born in Poland and I was looking for the URL you matter. So you matter.com, but to buy that URL was insanely priced. It was being used. so I'm like, this gotta be like, you know, when, when, when we were growing up, like
Doug (31:14)
and
Doug (31:21)
They used to use words for automobiles. They'd take them from another language, Spanish usually, like the Zephyr or whatever.
Doug (31:29)
And the.
Doug (31:32)
I like, there's gotta be another language that sounds, that can say you matter, right? Well, the bitno is a Slavic term that means you're important or you matter. And so that's why I took it. Now, the, you know, you always have to test things, right? To see if they stick or not. And so people are always like, they're having challenges saying the word. especially now all anybody from Eastern Europe is like, I get it.
but a primary audience is in North America at this point. So we're probably gonna change the name of that just so the, know, especially for the Americans or North America in general. But what that is, is a automated follow-up, proactive, relevant, meaningful follow-up system. What does that all mean? That means the system learns about us and it actually will create messages between us.
Doug (32:05)
and
Doug (32:21)
⁓ that are relevant, like, you know, I know you're in Ontario. know, you know, you're in Ottawa. We talked about, you know, the hockey a bit. ⁓ right. So I can, I can get some points of interest in what the bit no will do is analyze that and say, Hey, you haven't talked to Wayne and, know, ⁓ three weeks. Let's reach out to Wayne. Let's talk about Ontario and what might be happening in Ontario at this point, right?
Doug (32:41)
and
⁓
Doug (32:47)
You know, like I won't bring this up, but secretly I went to the Boston Bruins Toronto Maple Leafs game last night. Right. And, ⁓ so, you know, I wouldn't bring that up because. You know, Toronto didn't win, right? But if Toronto had a one, last two games, I might bring that up and, know, in, in our conversation, because, you know, knowing if you like the maple leaves or whatever, then the system would recognize that and say, okay. This is a good conversation to have, you know,
I was just thinking about you, Wayne. was thinking, you know, the, maple leaves and Bruins played last night, the Bruins, you know, congratulations to your team, you know, that type of thing. It just keeps us relevant and fresh our relationship up to date. Right. We all know we went to school with certain people for 12 years. Some of us, we stopped talking to one another after that conversation, but then as life goes on,
Doug (33:26)
and
and
Doug (33:37)
You're like, maybe you're on, you know, what used to be called Facebook now called Metta or some social media platform. And you're like, wonder, geez, I wonder how Bernie's doing. I haven't talked to Bernie in Jesus 14 years, right? Hey, Bernie, this is Doug from school. I, geez, I'm sorry. We lost track of one another. How you doing? And Bernie might read back. Okay, Doug, it's good to hear from you. Right. We re-engaged the, by the way, folks dormant clients, right? You go back, but that Bernie has a
is a dormant client, but this is all you do, right? You reach back out to them. so Bernie and I reestablished that relationship. Now, if we don't talk to one another for six years, nothing's going to come out of that relationship, just a con, you know, just a thing. But imagine if you had a system now that said, okay, you re-engage with Bernie every whatever timeframe, every six weeks, every two months, you're just going to reach out to Bernie with something that's relevant to him.
Doug (34:08)
And
Doug (34:30)
guess what? can pull Bernie's LinkedIn profile and look at that. I can look at his social media. He might have articles out there. There's all kinds of things that we could do. And then over time, I'm building a process. Bernie might say, geez, I have this that happened in my life, but that happened in my life. And we all want to know the other person cares about us. So it will cue up the message and say, Hey, do you want to send this to Bernie or send this to Wayne? Or would you just like
Doug (34:47)
⁓
Doug (34:56)
me to remind them of certain days in their lives that are special, maybe your birthday's coming up and it's like, Hey guys, you So it was a way to stay in contact with people in a way that mattered to them. That was the whole idea behind it. And yes, Wayne, use AI in the system too, as well. Right. So that is the process. Uh, and that's why I developed it. Well, the reason I developed is because I went on vacation one time and lost $125,000 sale.
Ow. My oldest daughter became ill while we were on vacation.
Doug (35:30)
And I.
Doug (35:32)
I was working for a company at the time.
Doug (35:35)
And.
Doug (35:35)
I asked the company, said, I can't get back for three days. She's, we took her to the hospital and they're like, don't worry. We'll cover all your calls. We'll cover all your mail. We'll cover all your snail mail, all that. And when I got back, my email box was jammed. My phone was jammed. my snail mail was overflowing onto the floor. Right. And I was the top rep in this company at that time. And, ⁓ you know, I'm one of my voicemail messages, like some gentleman was calling me for four days straight. Doug, where are you? I want to buy from you. want to buy from you.
Doug (35:54)
and
Doug (36:02)
I picked up the phone, I called him and he said, Jesus. I said, I'll be right over. He goes, well, sorry, man. had my CEO was pressuring me to make this decision. We went with, he said the name was Lightship. I'm like, when did you talk to Lightship that we were our number one competitor? He goes, well, they cold called me four days ago. And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. We have been working for three and a half months on this deal together. So I lost $125,000 sale.
And back then that commission to me was $25,000 and my vacation cost me $4,400 if I remember correctly. So it literally cost me $29,400 to go on vacation. And I said, never, never, never, never again, cause I'm not the only one going through this, right? So that's what I developed it for.
Wayne (36:45)
Doug, if someone is listening to this story, listening to this podcast, they're going, listen, I want to reach out to Doug. I want to get the Vibitno, in my space. First off, what type of budget? Second off, how do they reach you? And third off, do you have a book or podcast out there also?
Doug (37:01)
Yeah.
Doug (37:02)
Thanks for asking all those questions. The first thing is, know, Vibitno ⁓ is a thing that, think about it costing around 97 bucks a month, right? Cause that's about what it costs. We're actually doing lifetime memberships on Vibitno. Cause we're finding that people who are in this, they're like, I love this thing. And it's like, all right, so let's put some more enhancements in there and let's help. You want to help us, we'll help you.
Here's a lifetime login, fixed costs, boom, right? And then that goes to the development of the new features and stuff. If they want to get ahold of me, probably the best way is ⁓ email actually. It's doug at CEO sales strategies, plural on both of those.com. So doug at CEO sales strategies.com. Some people reach out to me on LinkedIn at dougbrown1234.
And, and, ⁓ let's see what else, ⁓ so you asked, ⁓ those two questions. the podcast of the book I wrote, I wrote a book called win, win, selling, locking the power of profitability by resolving objections to my delight. It went to number one seller and I think four or five countries and, ⁓
Doug (38:07)
⁓
Yeah.
Doug (38:14)
It's all about the psychology and philosophy on how to resolve objections, matter what objection it is. So instead of giving people like, you know, if they say this, say that, right? That type of thing. It's about the psychology of why they're saying that and how you can say whatever you need to say. And the words don't always have to be perfect, but you can still get to that thing. So it's a whole process on how to resolve those. Then I have a podcast called the CEO.
sales strategies podcast.
Wayne (38:43)
Coincidence!
Doug (38:44)
Yeah.
Doug (38:44)
Didn't take a lot of thought on that one, right?
I started that podcast.
Doug (38:50)
⁓ on a
Doug (38:50)
It's called the double dog dare. You know, it comes from the movie, Ralphie and the Christmas movie or whatever. A lot of my friends were like, Hey, listen, you have all this experience. Why don't you just share it on a podcast? And I'm like, why? And they're like, you know, because people need to know this information. And I said, okay. but I'm not doing a podcast. And then one of my friends said, I double dog dare you to do the best podcast in the world. Right. And I'm like, all right.
Put your money up with your mouth is, know, and all that stuff. And we made a little bet. in our first year, the podcast just started shooting up because what I did is just like you guys, I brought real, real people on. and my criteria was you had to build at least a $5 million and up company. And we're going to talk about the good things you did. And we're also going to talk about the hard times and the bad things that happened and how you got out of both of those, you know, what you learned from those.
Doug (39:18)
And
⁓
Doug (39:42)
And it was a pretty successful thing. My friend does no longer double dare me on certain things at this point.
Wayne (39:49)
Why?
Doug (39:50)
You
Doug (39:51)
So, you know, and so, mean, it's great. had like very successful entrepreneurs on there. ⁓ Actually, Brian Scudamore from Canada, know, 1-800-GOT-JUNK. He was on the podcast. Super nice guy, smart guy. We were joking because I actually had the idea of 1-800-GOT-JUNK before he did, but I never put it into play.
Doug (40:03)
⁓
And he...
Doug (40:12)
He said that to me, goes, yeah, there's a difference. I said, I believe I know what you're gonna say. And he goes, well, I put it into play, you didn't. So that's the thing. So, touche, Brian. So those are great ways of getting a hold of me. If they want the book, they can go to winwinsellingbook.com. Guys, can I give away a free gift on this for your audience? Absolutely.
Wayne (40:32)
Certainly.
Doug (40:35)
I did this whole, it's a video course, it's kind of a concise video course, but it's on what we call the 2X methodology, which is really how do you double your sales predictably with metrics. And they can get it at CEOsalesstrategies.com forward slash the number two in X. So it's just CEOsalesstrategies forward slash 2X.
Doug (40:47)
And
⁓
Doug (40:58)
You know, they exchanged their name and email address, but they get a very robust course on how to do this. And it's not a long course because what I've learned over time is 13 % of people actually even if it's a long course, they won't, only 13 % will actually watch it through, right? So we shortened up the course into more of a mini course, give you a
just what you need to have to get things going. And so I'd like to give that away if that's good. So thank you guys.
Wayne (41:28)
Doug Brown, I want to say thank you so much for sharing a wealth of information, everything from the Vibitno the podcast information, the book and the course that you're offering to the listeners. I like to say thank you to ⁓ Wayne Pratt as to being a cohost and you, especially you, the natural business listeners, because without you, then what's the point? Right. And so just remember, Doug helps business owners replace the unpredictable sales.
with a reliable, repeatable revenue using simple, I'm gonna redo that again, because I just rolled out of my tongue a little sideways. Doug helps business owners replace the unpredictable sales with reliable and repeatable revenue using simple, measurable systems that remove the stress from selling. So if you're stressed, then you're not gonna make good choices, right? And he's passionate about it. So reach out to him.