One on one with Dave Brown: Unveiling the Secrets of Sales Mastery with Dave Brown

Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dave Brown, the mastermind behind Impact Training, Inc. With a proven track record of guiding sales teams to close over $20 Billion in sales, Dave has solidified his position as a trailblazer in the industry. Discover the innovative strategies and visionary insights that have propelled Dave to the forefront of sales leadership. Whether you're an aspiring sales professional or a seasoned expert, this episode offers invaluable wisdom to elevate your sales game to unprecedented heights.

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What's up guys, Chris Bowen here with Level Up the Podcast. I am joined by Dave Brown today. Dave is a business coach and one of the best in the business, man. I tell you, Dave, why don't you introduce yourself to everybody? What is going on Chris Bowen and audience? How are you? I love being here, man. Level up the podcast. Let's have fun. Absolutely, let's do it man. I'm excited today. It's gonna be a good day. You got me all pumped up for this, so I'm excited. Good. I couldn't be happier to be here, Chris. I know we've had the opportunity to talk about your business and you've gotten to hear a little bit about mine. And so I just really am thankful that you asked me to be on and, you know, I'm going to let this conversation go any direction that you want, but I'll try to keep my answer short and concise for you so that we can hopefully get through a lot of material and maybe drop a few, you know, nuggets and bombs for people so that at the end of this show people go. Man, this was a great episode by Chris Bowen. Well, let's do it, man. So why don't you start off, tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us about your coaching business, how'd you get into it? Well, you know, it's a short version. You got to go back before you can go forward. But my history has been in the mortgage industry for 30 years. And in that, I literally have done every aspect in the mortgage industry from loan officer, sales manager, branch manager, area manager, and just kept growing. And at one point in my career, in the early 2000s, my managers came to me, Chris, and they said, listen, we want you to be the poster child and show the rest of the company, the rest of the division. And at the time I was working for a really large, the number one mortgage company in the country. And they were like, we want you to show the other managers that if they would give up their personal production and just pour into their team, recruit more, train and really become a leader. And that was the key, really become a leader that ultimately, they could grow their production of their teams and ultimately on a personal level make more money. And so. that works, but that's exactly how that works. crazy how it works. And so I kind of had to step out and I was blessed because I had a large area already in Indiana, but I kind of stepped out with a leap of faith and roll ahead, you know, 18 to 24 months, they're having me stand up in divisional meetings in front of managers that were peers and say how much I had made. And then they'd say, well, how much of that was off of personal production? And literally, I think the one year I stood up and and literally said, I think I made 21 ,000 last year off of personal production and people were just dumbfounded because I was the biggest branch, but I proved that if you pour it into your people and really let your people know how much you care, and there's that old saying, and Chris, you've heard it, but it's that old saying, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And when I, it is, and so when I stopped, not really competing against them, but when they knew that I was there every day to do nothing but support them, that was it. Clear obstacles out of their way so that they could go sell more. Production went up, ROI went up, my income went up. It just, it truly was a beautiful thing to see. You know, and that's what it's all about when you're, you know, a sales manager or growing a sales team. It's really about pouring into those guys and showing them, Hey, I'm about the team. I'm not about myself. I am here to make you better. I'm here to help you. I am here to help you close more deals. Absolutely. And that's hard. Let's face it. I've been there. You've been there as a owner and as a leader. It is hard when I say you're trying to put food on the table, but you have goals and aspirations and you have kids to feed and they want to do things. And so to step back and say, I'm not going to do what I'm really good at, which is go sell, and I'm going to pour my time and energy over here. It's a little bit scary, but when you do it for your listeners, Chris, I'm telling you, when you step into that leadership role and your team sees that, trust me, just trust me on this, they will respond and they will step up and you will be able to ask them to do more. They'll produce more for you and they'll produce at more of a profitable rate for you. It's a beautiful thing to see. I love it. I love it, man. Dropping bombs today. You said it. You said it. So, and then I was reading online, you guys did a little over a billion dollars in production with a B. Is that correct? With a B. yeah, so thank you. It's, you know, and we can, you know, it's easy to talk about what you did in the past, but in the mortgage industry and in that space, there are not a lot of managers that can say, I ran billion dollar a year production teams and we did it a couple of years in a row. That was. world that can say that, not just in the mortgage industry, but in the world that can say they ran billion dollar teams. But you know what? It was, it was a team. And so, but I had the opportunity to be, you know, kind of that person that was responsible for the P and L's and, and solving problems and making people feel better. Um, you know, kind of, you know, and getting, you know, kind of putting problems, you know, aside and it was in the mortgage industry. And so believe me, I felt like a lot of days and not to diminish our, our, you know, our great public servants, you know, firefighters, but. I felt like literally a firefighter with two cell phones, the desk phone. It was never ending. But yeah, with a B, it was a lot of fun. So I've got that, you know, I can say that, you know, it's kind of fun to tell my son who's in the mortgage business now, yeah, we closed over a billion. It's like 9 ,200 loans. How did you survive? And, you know, my wife will look at him and say, lot of stressful days and years, but you know, pretty cool stuff, man. So great question. Thank you. So how have you been able to translate your history in the mortgage business to your new, what you do now, which is business coaching? Yeah, that's a great question, Chris. And the simple answer is I took those experiences and now this is where, you know, billion dollar sales teams or five and $600 million sales teams come into play because I was battle tested, if you will. There literally wasn't anything that I haven't gone through in the... kind of the mortgage and business space and the business applications are relative for all for all businesses. And so, you know, primarily in sales, and I'll say that, you know, we were direct to consumer. So we were dealing. So that's where my specialty is, is helping business owners that are just like I was in the mortgage industry. Our clientele is the consumers out in the public. OK. And so because of those experiences, I was I and I'll back up. I mentioned I stopped. Selling I stopped being a manager and I became a leader. Okay, and so when I really understood and that was the difference so over the last 15 20 years I have poured my heart and soul into studying great leaders People like John Maxwell Tony Robbins John Maxwell's been probably my go -to mentor from the leadership space And I just truly believe that everything rises and falls upon that. And so I bring that over to other businesses now when I'm helping them and I'm able to sit down and just assess, you know, if we, if we have to dive into the P and L, which isn't the most fun thing, um, you know, I can dive into the P and yeah, but you gotta do that. I mean, you know, people say, well, you know, why do you, why do you spend so much time evaluating that P and L and tracking if you don't track and know your numbers? the numbers will run out the back door. You can't grow. continue to grow. If you don't know your numbers, then you can't scale year over year over year. Eventually, you're going to plateau and you won't be in business any longer. That's just how that works. gotta watch those pennies. I had a teacher who's deceased now, Mr. Charlie Barnum. And I remember this dude in high school used to say, and used to think it was the corniest, goofiest thing, but I remembered as I got into business, you know, in my 20s and 30s, that he used to say, pennies make nickels and nickels make dimes and dimes make dollars. And he was a business teacher, but he always said that, you know, and kind of like in the morning before class, and you'd be like, that's kind of stupid, you know, a teacher saying it. But, you know, as I started, you know, and I always remembered that then when I started having P and L responsibilities that you got to take care of the pennies and the nickels and the dimes because they add up to dollars, right? And so it's really important. And so I think it's a great question, but those are the, those are. Those are some of the principles that I was able to bring forward. And then, you know, if we get into talking about recruiting and training, that's a whole, that's a whole nother, you know, animal as part of that leader. talk about though, as well. And I would love to talk about that because I think a lot of people don't, that's one of the things that they struggle with is not just recruiting and training, but getting the right people on their team. And people really struggle with finding the right people. And so, you know, as somebody who's managed a massive team before, how did you go about finding the right people to put in place? A lot of trial and error, Chris. And so that's a really, again, another good question, but let me dive into that a little bit. I think it's really, it's important because I think the first thing is a, as a manager and then as you're stepping more into the leadership role, something you have to understand right now, you, nobody, nobody is a, is going to bat 100 % on perfect hires. You just, you're not going to do it. You are going to make mistakes. You're going to hire. people that are just not right for the organization. You have to know that the key is recognizing it quickly and being able to terminate or overboard them or you're fired. You have to be able to do that because you're going to make mistakes. You know, there are certain things that you can do and let me give you a couple of examples. I used to try to meet people at least three or four times before I would hire them. Now sometimes if they were in sales, you just, you knew them and so you wanted to hire them. They were on your, you know, your target list. But sometimes if you didn't know somebody very well, I would want to, you know, maybe the first meeting I'd meet them in the office for an interview. Then I'd schedule a second interview, maybe like a lunch or a coffee meeting. And I might take one of my team members along, one of my support team members that were going to work alongside them. And I did that so that they could. kind of observe and I wanted to see also how that person treated somebody else on my team that they weren't going to report to. So it would show me things because if they were disrespectful to that person or acted as if they weren't there, it was a bad sign. And so then we would put them through the paces and then we might even invite them out a third time maybe for an end of the day like. you know, drink or something, a cocktail or, you know, could be a Pepsi or a cocktail. But I wanted to see how they interacted in different environments. And I wanted to see how they interacted with like the wait staff, were they jovial, were they, you know, depending upon their role, I just wanted to see different environments. Okay. So that was something that was something else we did. And then I think for people that are recruiting and growing teams, Chris, this is really important. They're buying into you. Yes. And what I mean by that is you have to, yeah, it's that they want the vision. People follow people. And let's face it, whatever your, there's very few products. We're not building, let's say rocket ships. We're not like Elon Musk building a rocket ship. There's only a couple places in the world right now that are building rocket ships. So our products are pretty much mainstream. And so it comes down to. are into your vision as a manager and a leader, how you present that to the people that you're recruiting, because ultimately they're following you. I always say they're hitching their wagon to you and then trusting not just their paycheck, but they're like saying, I got my family in the wagon right here. And I'm trusting you, Chris, that your vision is the right one for me and my family, which at the end of the day is all they really care about. It is. And I'm trusting that your vision is going to get our family in this wagon to where we want to be across the plane or across, you know, whatever it is, you know, financial freedom or, you know, to be able to buy a bigger house. But that's, that's the vision that you have to be able to articulate with people. And first, you have to know it yourself. You have to believe it and you have to be able to articulate it to others. I think that's a huge part of it, man. I believe that, you know, people, they respond well to people in that they have to see that vision. There's a popular saying that if you don't believe in a product, you can't sell it. And that's true to a degree. And maybe not even just the product, but if you don't believe in the vision of the owner or your manager or whoever's in charge, then you're not going to perform. You have to believe in them. in order to be able to perform. You know, very few people cannot do that and still perform. Absolutely, Chris, that is so, that's valuable. Man, for your listeners, I hope you just heard that. That's like one of those, I mean, if Brad Lee were here, he'd be like, bomb, there's a bomb. But no, but that, think about how many times you are talking to a friend or a family member, coworker, and you hear them, they've left their employment. It's like, oh, what happened? It's like, ah, they didn't appreciate me. They didn't, right? And it's a feeling. It, Typically, it's not, and once in a while it comes down to money, but if money is the great equalizer, it comes down to they don't feel appreciated. And so they leave sometimes for a little bit of a raise that honestly, if they would have gone to their own company, they may have gotten that raise, but they feel unappreciated or they don't feel like they're part of the vision. And so they choose to leave. welcoming environment is so important in business as well. And kind of having that family aspect to a lot of businesses is so important because it allows people to feel like they have a home there. And that even though they can go somewhere else for a little bit more per year, they're going to want to stay with you, A, because they believe in you and B, because you're treated like family there and you're treated well. And I think that that really resonates with a lot of people. And that overcomes a lot of the objections that you get when it comes to people leaving to go elsewhere. You know, you just you hit on something really important. You might if I segue for a minute off of that Perfect. So I think you know for the listeners Chris, this is really important because Let's face it if it's your business like you you have you're you're an owner of a business And and we can talk about the family environment, but at the end of the day They don't own the business. Okay, and so I think we can talk about this culture in this family environment, which I think is important. And that's what people, I believe they want. But they also are smart enough. They understand I'm not family. I don't get ownership here. So what do they want? And I'm going to share. There you go. And the way you appreciate them, and this is where so many leaders and managers fail, they'll say to me when I'm coaching them, well, how do I discover if they're unhappy? How do I know? And I'm like, oh my God, how often do you have a team meeting? Yeah, how often do you meet with them one on one? They're like, oh, well, once a year when I do their review. And I'm like, there's the, yeah, there's the problem. It's like, you know, so as a leader, as a manager, obviously you've got some team meetings depending upon how big of a company it is. You might have to have, you know, a quote sales meeting or team meeting weekly. But if you're not having at least a monthly check in with each of your team members that report to you, you're missing the boat because they will tell you if they're unhappy. And you know, Chris, so, yes, yes. Thank you. about work. It can be, hey, how's your wife? How's your kids? How's your grandma doing? But it starts with the conversation. And once people get to talking, they'll tell you exactly what's on their mind. You just ask a few questions and they will tell you. So to foster, that's the family environment that when people get to feel like, even though they know they may not be involved in the final decisions. And I used to say all the time, listen, I have an open door policy, right? Now that told my people they could come in at any time and talk to me. But ultimately I would say it's not a democracy. I'm the one that's responsible for the P&L and the dollars and cents. And I'm the one that's. you know, that's, you know, has to report up, you know, to the all the way going up to the board of directors. And so therefore, I'll listen to you. But I'm going to seek advice and counsel. But at the end of the day, I'm going to make the decision same thing here. But by asking and so Chris, I just find so often that managers of companies, and a lot of times entrepreneurs, you know, we don't get training on this, right. And I didn't get it in the mortgage industry. I got mortgage training over time, but I had to go find and seek mentorship and pay for coaching and dive into becoming a better leader to learn some of these things. And I think I innately understood these things, but I can't believe how often managers will say to me, oh yeah, I never even knew they were unhappy. Shame on you, shame on you. down to some managers have a certain management style and that's all that they know. And as a manager, that's not really how that works. Everybody has a different way that they respond positively to management. And you have to figure that out as a manager. How does this person respond? What do they respond best to? And if you don't figure that out, you'll have unhappy employees and unhappy salespeople. So. a great point. Again, it's another nugget. And you know, let's face it, Chris, there are some times where you just have to say to your team, listen, I'm sharing this with you in this format right now. I understand maybe somebody here likes to read it, somebody likes to absorb it differently. But this is kind of an important message I'm getting out. We can have a one -on -one to talk more in depth, but you need to know this information. I mean, there are times where you just have to say things or do things where you can't worry about feelings. But Chris, you're so right. It comes back to a little bit of common sense goes a long way. Just make these people feel good and they will go into battle. I think about that movie. They will. And when they do that, they'll make you look like a rock star, which is what you want. exactly right. So what's one of the biggest takeaways when you're dealing with a small business? What is the biggest issue that you see with most small businesses that something that they can work? That's a great question, Chris. And I think, yeah, I'm going to tell you one of, and it's a great question. So I'm going to say one of the primaries, maybe not the only, but it's at least one of the top couple that I see. So many business owners, and I'm even going to, let's cross that over to salespeople. Because salespeople in a lot of cases then become business owners, right? yeah. good in sales, whatever their profession is. It can be, you know, selling pools and they decide they're going to go out and start their own pool company. It could be, you know, they're a loan officer and they decide with another friend that they want to go start their own mortgage company or real estate office, whatever it is. So what I find a lot of times, which is really common, and I'll start with this first one, it's tracking. It's amazing how... It doesn't matter how long the person's been in the business, whether they're fairly new or whether they're on this spectrum and they've been in the business a long time, I find there is such a gap in their tracking mechanisms and I call it in my training, KPI growth gauge. It's kind of a, you know, when I spend a lot of time working on that with people, but I just find they don't, they don't, two things, they don't track. If they do track, sometimes they're not tracking the correct metrics that they really need to be tracking. And then a lot of times business owners, they've never really been trained on what are they supposed to, how are they supposed to take that data and interpret it, if that makes sense. No, it makes total sense. And the way I kind of hear that from you is something that I've experienced is that a lot of people don't know how to find out what their true overhead looks like because they're not tracking things correctly, which then in turn means that they don't know how to charge correctly for whatever their service is as well. Because not every business is built the same. Every business is different, which means that everybody's markup. should be different to reflect that overhead. You know, I just I saw this and it may or may not be true, but it's probably fairly accurate. I saw a clip. It was a reel on Instagram and it was something about, you know, employees think that, you know, businesses make like 30, 40 % profit margin, right? The business owner might think that it's 20, 25%, they think. But when it really gets down to brass tacks, it typically comes down to anywhere from 6 to 10 percent, right? Unless you're a company like Walmart, and I don't know if this is true, I haven't validated this, but they said Walmart operates off of about a 3 percent profit margin, but they have a store on every corner in the world. you know, probably a trillion dollar company at this point. So, I mean, what's 3 % of a trillion dollars? Exactly. So bringing that back to your question with the tracking and you added to this that you have to understand in the tracking, you have to really understand what your true cost is. And it's really intoxicating as a business owner and a salesperson, you know, you bring in 50 grand into the business account or your checkbook and it's like, man, I'm rich. I just break, you know, 50 grand and then you start taking out expenses and, and, you know, next thing you know, but the problem is if you start stacking up, you know, multiple sales like that, and I think about, you know, some, some people I've known in, you know, kind of in the building industry, where they have multiple homes going at one time, and they have really large draws coming in, you know, they could easily have four or 500,000 of money coming into their account. And it's really easy to feel like, holy, we've made it. Yeah. But then, you know, when you start vetting it out, it's like, oh, but 492 ,000 of the 500 has to go out to lumber yard and concrete and suppliers. And that's why I think tracking is so important. And then let me move on to the sales side of tracking now. And this is where this gets it. So again, the tracking part we just covered as far as knowing your numbers and how to really extrapolate what your true ROI is important. But now you've got to move that into the sales environment because let's face it, it doesn't matter what profession, if you don't make a sale or have a client buy something from you, then you don't have a company. You have a, I think they call that a hobby. And we've all had hobbies and I like, I like revenue a lot better than a hobby. But when I start looking at people's, you know, for people that have their. expenses under control or at least controllable that they understand them. When I start looking at things like, let's look at how many leads came into your, and I call it the funnel, but how many leads hit your business this month? Okay, it might be a solopreneur, you might have one or two, three salespeople, but how many leads hit your funnel? Then we want, so we want to look at that. How are you doing on attracting? Attracting is the first thing. Then we've got to look at how are you doing at asking for the business. So you get these leads that come in, you have to have a, there you go. Now we start tracking asking, and then we go from asking to converting. Then from converting, now you've got to retain it during a sales cycle and make sure they don't run off to a competitor and get maybe a lower price during. your transaction before you get to close and get your money for you and your business. And then it's the, how well do you do after that staying in touch? So it's like the five things, you know, that, that I kind of cover, but by looking at that, I can help salespeople and business owners look at that and say, okay, listen, you have plenty of leads coming in, right? Lead gen isn't your problem. The problem is your, your team is terrible at converting. So now we know. It's a closing. So now we have to work on that part of the, of the, the funnel. Once we work on that, it might be, well, now we've closed and we got a commitment, but now we're not following up and staying in touch, making them feel good. We're not creating raving fans during the process. Therefore they're getting frustrated and going to my competitors. So we look at all these aspects so that we can see what's the cost to acquire the customer. If you're running ads, time and money. And then how many of those are we pulling through so that we can really extrapolate what's your closing ratio and how many leads do you need to bring in to actually get a paycheck over here? And you have to know those numbers. You absolutely have to know them. Well, and what a lot of businesses don't implement is... you know, a CRM that can handle a lot of that, that can handle some of those automations of those soft touches that need to happen throughout the sales cycle in order to have a happy customer at the end. You know, kind of like in the pool business, you know, one of the biggest complaints that you see in construction is a lack of communication between a project manager and a homeowner. And a lot of that can be solved with automation. you know, through your CRM, you close out as soon as the pool's been dug, it sends an email. Let's the homeowner know what the next phase is. This is what it looks like. It's very blanketed, but it works for every project. Yeah. And if you have a system in place that works once, why not replicate it, duplicate it. And, and again, this is kind of where, when you asked earlier, you know, what, what do I do? There are some things that on the outside are very basic that as a business coach that I'm able to help see certain things like this. Sometimes it's a blatant gap. It's like, Oh, you don't have any sort of a CRM. You don't have a follow -up, but sometimes it's just. Saying to somebody well did that work with your last three clients? Yeah, it worked really well Well, maybe you Chris maybe you should think about doing it again and again if it worked with those three I bet it would work with the next three, but it's again solopreneurs salespeople They're busy doing so many things that that's where the business coaching whatever field you're in can really help you because now you have somebody come alongside you not only see the gaps or the opportunities and But it's, you know, rarely do I have somebody that's just ready to run off a cliff that I have to go, hey, you better stop, you're gonna run off a cliff. Now sometimes that happens. Normally it's just helping them stay within the bumper lines, pushing a little bit more, and then having the courage. This is tough. A lot of people say they want to be held accountable. No, a lot of people don't, but it makes a big difference when you have somebody who does hold you accountable, as long as you're willing to accept that accountability and have the ability to take constructive criticism, which is, you know, as a business owner, which is what you need to be successful. Yeah, you really do. And so again, that's part of, and I'll tell you one of the things that I do and any good business coach is they have a really robust intake process. I check in with people when I'm going through what I call intake to see if they're a good fit or if I'm a good fit for them. If they're not coachable, if they're not willing and committed to get started in a reasonable period of time, and if they're not willing to do the work, they're not a good fit. You know, I tell people and I hate to do it, but it's sometimes you just have to tell people, listen, you're just not committed. But I check in at multiple times through the questioning process to make sure if I'm getting a negative or negative feedback on that from them, that they aren't going to follow helpful hints that they're paying for and or they're not going to allow me to hold them accountable if they really just want to say, there are people that just like to say, oh man, I've got a coach, I got a business coach. I've got a health coach. I've got a, you know, I've got three coaches. Well, good for you, but that doesn't work for me because I want, I want my people to get results and they, that's what they should want for themselves, Chris. Absolutely, I agree with that a hundred percent man. So for people that are interested in coaching What's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Man, that is an easy, easy, easy thing. We were talking about this. I have got one site. Instead of sending you off to a few directions on social media, all you have to do is just go online to TalkingWithDave.com. TalkingWithDave .com. And that's all you have to do is, you know, talking. Yeah, that's it. TalkingWithDave .com. It'll take you to my website with. All my business card, I mean, as far as my scheduling, my podcast, anything you need, talkingwithdave .com is all right there in one location. I love it. Well, Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Lots of great information. We really appreciate it. And hopefully we can help some people learn in business. Beautiful. Chris, thanks so much for having me and folks like and share this podcast. This guy here is pouring his heart and soul into you. So, you know, like share this podcast with other people that you care about and help boost this for him so that he can get the word out and help more people. Thanks for having me, Chris. Appreciate it, man. Take care.