Be Intentional and Listen to Win Relationships with Casey Jacox

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Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExCexcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff.

Let's rephrase it from the sales process.

To the relationship process. Where does it begin? How do you start the relationship building process?

I think it starts with yourself having the right mindset, right? Sailing. If I, if I have a bad morning, let's say my, my wife, you know, puts peanut butter in my coffee and I, and I get, I snap, right? Or something crazy like that, right? And I know I'm on tilt. And then I go to the office and I bring a bad attitude. Well, already now I'm eroding my culture, I'm eroding my team. I'm going to get judged because I think I'm so great, I can just treat people like that. And then my customers are going to fill it, my prospects are going to fill it. So I think the step one, you got to, you got to start a day with positivity. And the first chapter of my book is about treating people the way you want to be treated. It was taught when we were kids. Yet when we get in this corporate America, we're allowed to be a holes to each other. We're allowed to get mad at the admin. We're allowed to treat he or she with disrespect. We're allowed to get frustrated with people or flip someone off on the road. In the end, I just think be nice. Start with intentionality about what you want to get out of the day. And then I think if you're. As it relates to selling, I think relationship. The first step is understand who. Who and why are you calling somebody? You know, one of the. One of the. My mentors in my career taught me four great questions to ask which is. Or to be thinking about which is do I understand the problems in my industry? Like, what problems exist? Do I understand what problems I solve? Do I understand how I solve them better or differently than my competition? And do I understand my proof? Like, so simple. Yet most companies I work with have no clue. Those four questions zero. And I love that you use one.

Of my favorite words, intention. It's my fit. One of my favorite words. I'm on camera being asked like what I think I have superpower. It's like I'm intentional. One of the themes for my sales org for an entire year was execution with intention. Right. Cause like most, you know, most time we don't succeed in life because we don't execute. But at the same time, you can execute with poor intention and not get it done. So touch on that a little bit more because like the intention of the relationship I think is a really foundational thing to cover of. Like what should your intention be with building this relationship?

Yeah. You make me think of early in my selling career when, as when reps are taught to pound the phone. Pound the phone, to pound the phone, get all these things out. And all of a sudden you're just. You're so autopilot. Then all of a sudden someone comes up, someone answers it. You're not ready for like sh. Shoot. Like, that's not intention. Intention is I am clear. I. I'm clear why I'm calling this person. I can't wait for them to pick up. I have no distractions. I got my phone away. I've got email closed out. I have. Or intention could be if I'm talking to you, am I looking down? Am I looking at my watch? Am I sending you these cues that I don't want to be there? Or do I give you the gift of listening, which is intent, eye contact, curiosity in my tone of my voice, good body language, not just hearing, but I'm listening. Hearing is Subconscious listening is conscious. And so when I do those things, I am very intentional and have a. And have a, have a point or purpose what you do. And I don't know if you can see the sign behind me, but it says believe. Yep. Now, when you believe what you do matters and start the day with what, if you believe what you do matters, there's. You'll. You'll be intentional about everything because there'll be. Your confidence will be higher. And I always tell myself whenever I actually work with people that I feel like their confidence gets rattled. I'll say, yeah, tell me what's changed? And they'll be like, what are you talking about? I said, I thought you believe what you do matters, but it looks like you don't anymore, you know, and so saying a little tongue in cheek and sarcastic, but bringing it all together. I think when you think about those things in that context, intentionality will happen.

So we have the, you know, intention, we have the positivity. We get into expectations. Right. Building trust. Right. And trust is done through, follow through and doing what you say you're going to do. What comes next?

Chapter three is about the difference between listening and hearing. So it's really the art of listening. Hearing, like I mentioned in the intro, kind of hearing is subconscious. No offense to the smartwatch people. Worst invention ever. Worst invention ever. Because no one's teaching reps to turn the buzz off or the. Because I'm meeting. They look it down. It's like that's cues that you don't want to be there. And maybe I'm old school thinking that way, but when people do it to me, I'm like, I will ask them like, do you got something else you got to go go to? Oh, sorry, I go. Take your watch off if you're me. So you're not. You're in with me. And people don't often. So listening is not. I'm on the phone, I'm texting, I'm on email. And you know, we as humans, they like to say, you know, we're. I'm a great multitasker. Bs. No one is. No one's a good multitasker. If you are intentional like you. Your favorite word, Kitty. And you listen and you document what you listen and you understand what's going on in someone's business. And I got taught a great question framework. Hopefully people are taking notes right now. This is gold. If you write down. It's called TED based questions. Tell me, explain, describe. And it's not just the first level like, hey, you know, tell me one thing that's going great in your, in your world, Mr. Mrs. Client. And one thing you might change. And once they give you something and you say tell me more, tell me more about that. Describe why that's important to you, explain what you like to see differently and just. But give them space to, to answer. When we listen to a prospect, I don't know if you've seen this, but so too often sellers will ask two questions inside of one question and you confuse the prospect. And so now I'm like, well, what question should I answer? And so I teach my, my clients, it's called the, I mean virtual selling, like a three tap rule Client can't hear you tapping your finger. But if you ask a question, tap your finger three times to let them think. And in listening, in the power of listening, if we can hear two words in a meeting, which is great question, that made you, made them think. And to me, that's how I measure success on meeting. If I made a client think or prospect think, I know I'm on the way to becoming uncommon.

How do you teach a team, you know, an individual, like, how to sound more curious? Because I don't know yet if you can make someone more curious, but I do believe you can teach them how to sound curious. So talk a little bit more about that because I think that's gold in all of this.

Yeah, I'll give you an example that one of my favorite questions I ask every new prospect to start even meetings, I'm still going on and it was a question I got taught late in my sales career that is gold if it's done right. So the example would be say we're going to go to a meeting. You're the prospect, I'm the seller, and if I come with an agenda and like, all right, Katie, I'm excited to meet you. Here are the things that we're going to be talking about. Well, that's about me, the seller, not you, the prospect. In the end, I want to make it about the prospect. So the question they taught me, which is all about curiosity is I might say, hey, Katie, you know, thanks for your time today. I'm role playing this out loud. Thanks for your time today. I prepared an agenda for some things that to hopefully cover. But the most important thing I want to do, tell me what would be an ideal outcome for you in the 45 minutes we have today or describe for me what a successful outcome would be in the time we have today. And when you ask that with the right tone and you notice my, my voice fluctuate a little bit which showed I'm curious. You get the answers to the test and I've yet I still have a 4.0 KD when I have the answers to the test. I've not messed that up yet, right? Oh yeah. Being sarcastic. But when, and sometimes I'll get sellers that will push back and be like, why would I want to ask them that? It's my, it's my meeting. I'm setting the agenda. True, but she's, but, but think about it. Would you rather talk about things that are important to you or important to the prospect? And if we don't ask that question in the very beginning, we don't give ourselves a chance. Uncle Rico moment coming here again to be audible at lion scrimmage. Be ready to understand. Okay. If I'm ready to be talking about this but they, they want to talk about more about A or B or something else, well then I need to pivot and be ready to talk about that. So I think back to your curiosity. Once we ask that question, they respond, we give them space and then we apply. Ted, tell me more about that. Too often I'm sure you've heard the sellers sales rep say this. Oh, I don't like to role play Katie, because I don't sound like that in front of the customer bs. I can't practice because it's just, it's, it's not, it's not, it's not real. Well, that's your mindset. In the work I do at Limitless Minds, I've I'm around some crazy smart brain science people and one of the things I've learned is that this, that the things we say to ourself. So 70% if we say something negative out loud, it increases the chance of happening by 70%. So think about that. Think about like if I'm a seller, like man, I got, they're not going to pick up man, I need to get a deal or I can't call that person. They're not going to be available. But when we use positive self talk and believe and people, and people might say that's corny but I believe in that stuff and it works. And the number one way I back that stat up is do you remember Bill Buckner? Now why do you remember Bill Buckner?

Because he let the ball through his.

Legs to the Mets, I believe 1986 World Series. And people might be saying what the hell does it have to do with mindset? What the hell does it have to do with self talk? Well 19 days before that he got interviewed by a local Boston radio station and they asked him how are you feeling? Like how where's your mind at? How are you excited to be here? And he said yeah I am. This is a dream come true. I've always wanted to be in the World Series. I have this dream I'm going to hit a home run to win the World Series. The nightmare I keep having though is I'm going to let a ground ball go to my legs to lose the World Series. 19 days before now is he a prophet? No. Did he predict the future? No. But when it's in the subconscious and you know we put those things out there, weird, it happens. So I think as a seller full circle back to when we started this conversation over. Your mindset is so important and removing words that create anxiety and replacing them instead with I will.