Win the Relationship, Win the Deal with Casey Jacox

Foreign. 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 InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff. What up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we are going to talk about one of the topics in sales and leadership that is always touched on but never explained. That always sounds good on the training floor and in the boardroom, but very rarely do people do it. And I'm talking about building relationships. In fact, a lot of salespeople say they're in sales because they love building relationships with people. And your manager will look at you and say, hey, just build a better relationship. But no one talks about how, how to actually do it. Building relationships is a skill. Building relationship takes intentions and questions and everything else that comes with it. And that is why I'm so pumped to have Casey Jacox with me on the show today, who literally wrote the book on how to build relationships in sales. He's the executive leadership coach at winning the relationship, and what he's done is taken his learnings as a coach and as a leader, as a rep, and compile them together to teach people how to actually build a relationship. So let's dive in today with this. Casey, my man, welcome to the show. Pumped to have you.

Yeah, I'm honored to. I'm honored to be here and thanks for the chance to join you. And do I do do I've earned the right to call you KD out of the gate, or do I got some.

Absolutely right. So KD out of the gate is fine. You can call me Kevin if I get out of line. So if I ask a really quick question like, hey, Kevin, we're not going to do that today. Awesome, man. Well, let's, let's do this, man, because, you know, one of the reasons why people love the show is we ride into the tactics right in to like, how to do these things right. And so when I pinged you what topic you said relationships and I said, but can you actually teach this? And you said, I'm ready. So let's talk about this a little bit. Relationship building real quick. Why is it important? Let's start there and then we'll get into tactics. But why is building a relationship so important in the sales process?

Well, transactions come and go. Relationships are built to last forever if they're done in the right way. And you couldn't not have articulated it. You were like, almost inside my mind, Katie, on why I wrote the book. Cause it was so clear to me at the end of my corporate journey where people would just keep telling me, hey, build relationships. You gotta go do it. I mean, colleges are telling their students to go build relationships. Leaders are doing it, but they're not teaching people. And right now, in this automated world where we can just text, we can have bots do stuff, we can it, and it's never going to replace a relationship. And I think about one of my favorite quotes by Maya Angelou. It's not what you said, why you said it, but how I made people feel when they leave the room. That feeling, I don't care what technology you have, will never trump the feeling of when you connect with someone. And so to me, relationships are everything. Um, you know, that's why I mean, the title of my book is, you know, win the relationship, not the deal. And people, like, people sometimes will get confused. Like, what do you mean you don't want the deal? I'm like, no, I want the deal, but I want to win people. If you win people, deals will come. And. And there's sometimes you might have to explain to a customer or prospect that, hey, I'm not the right guy, timing's not great. Which around expectation management. And I think when doing that, and I share examples inside the book and even share people I coach. Now, that's uncommon. People don't like doing uncommon things. People do what everybody else does. And I like doing things that are uncommon because that's how people will remember you.

And I love. I mean, we could almost end it right there. Win people and you win deals because it's the truth. Right. The deal is the outcome of doing everything else. Right? Right. You don't win the deal. You win the hearts and mind of the person that you are talking to. Right. So let's go a layer deeper then. Right. So where does it all begin? Right. Because a relationship is a process. Right. Like, I'm not expecting some magic line from you here. Like, here's how you build it. Let's go through the Relationship building process. So if I'm approaching, you know, the sales process, 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 feel it, my prospects are going to feel it. So I think the step one, you gotta, you gotta start 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 used 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? Because 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 on autopilot. Then all of a sudden, someone comes up, someone answers it. You're not ready for it. Like, oh, shoot. Like, that's not intention. Intention is. I am clear. 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.

I think that's so big. And there's a few things you touched on there that we're gonna go a little bit deeper on, but it is. It's remembering why you do what you do. It was actually, gosh, this was probably four or five months after, like, you know, Covid had hit and, like, our company had gone through a reduction in force, and people just, like, feeling really low, and they could just feel it. It's like, y', all, like, you forget why we do this, like, every day I want you to go and read one of our testimonials every day. I want you to go and read, like, how we've changed people's lives and what we have to remember. That's what we do. And that's why we pick up the phone. One of our core virtues of the org was help ytp. And YTP stood for Help yourself, Team Prospect. We're here to help, and that is our intention. Right. And so I love that. So, okay, let's keep going through this process. Okay. I've set my intention right. I have positive energy now. I can be positive and still not build a good relationship. Right. So I start my day. I got my intention, I'm positive. Then where do I go to start building this relationship? With a prospect?

Yeah. If it's all right, I'm just going to kind of go through each chapter on kind of how I.

That's the beauty of a book, is we got a framework. So let's do it.

There we go. There we go. So maybe before I died out how I came up with these six things, I went through what's called, like, a word mapping exercise. And if any people don't know what that is, you literally write down words and then you draw like a cloud around it and then you make a spoke and like, okay, what word connects with that word? And then I just. I literally had all these words on a piece of paper of things that I. And these words would describe how I would go about building relationships or when I was selling at an elite, elite level. Like, why? What was I doing? What was I not doing when I sucked? What was I not doing when I was doing? I was great. What was I doing? And then I had all these words and then I color coded them to figure out what went kind of with each one. And that really built the foundation or the six chapters of the book. So like you said, chapter one's all about treating people. You want to be treated. Power of the golden rule. Start with positivity. Second one is expectation management. Sellers will erode trust so quickly by not setting expectations. Something basic, as if I have a one o' clock meeting and I show up at 103 and assume that nothing's. We're fine. I just told, in my mind, I. I told the customer that my time is more important than yours. If I know I'm going to be late, pull over on the side of the road, text them, hey, I'm sorry, I'm going to be three minutes late. Just want to give you a heads up. Or if you have bad news to share about a product launch or delivery, what you get ahead of it before the client has to ask you about it. And so I give stories throughout, excuse me, I give stories of personal failure. In the book I talk about just the power of when you set expectations, it's a great way to build trust. You showed someone you followed through, you showed someone you listened to. But mainly you did what you said, you did what you were supposed to do. And I think so many sellers, I recently heard this recently a client that just hired me to do some work for them, they told me that they did not go with this big other person platform because they didn't follow through what they said they're going to do. I mean, just, we're leaving deal, we're leaving money on the table. And so I think winning relationships is, you know, the simplest, simplest thing is just setting expectations and following through on that.

And how do you recommend setting those expectations? What would be an example? Right? So it's like, okay, like, you know, being on time is, you know, expected or communicating. But like when it comes to building a relationship, are there certain things that you do to set proper expectations or are there certain expectations you can set that set up a good relationship?

I think, well, skipping ahead of chapter four is about the power of a CRM and how a CRM made me look way smarter than I am. So if I document correctly and I, I'm talking everything from anything I can think about, like for you as a Dodger fan, I might ask you about the Dodgers next time we speak. I might ask about, you know, your two daughters. How's that young competitive one, Is she getting ready to play? Who? You know, little things like that that I'm documenting so that when I, when I follow through, at least I'm making myself more, more relevant. I, I think really back to expectations, though. It's just, I mean, anything you can think of, like if you have something to communicate, whether it's good news, bad news, but it's something, communicate it again. I think. So often in my corporate career I found like I was in the staffing and consulting business and it was a, we sold a product that was people and you couldn't control people. And so there was a lot of times where you had to set expectations about something that maybe didn't exist, but you had to at least let them know something so that you, so then they knew that you were still either, you know, through the sales process or you were still engaged, but you weren't just like Afraid to call them or afraid to tell them something. And I found them. At least when you do. When we did those things, it just, it got people to the rapport was better, allowed me to develop commonality and I earned the right to keep on the phone longer because I was doing these little things along the way to list to keep them engaged.

I love this. The subtle, not so subtle call out on the CRM salespeople. Use it. Stop trusting your memory. You cannot remember everything the way that we think that we can put it down so you can actually listen and come back to it. So okay, I like where this is going. So we have the 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 if 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'll ask them like, do you got something else you gotta go go to? Oh, sorry on that. I go take your watch off. If you're with 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, Katie. 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 throw it 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 answer. When we listen to a prospect, I don't know if you've seen this, but 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 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 mean 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. And everything I document and everything I hear in a meeting, I document. And then when you, when you follow back up with somebody because that you told them that you were going to call on April, April 29, you remind them what they told you. And then you, you prepare yourself with intentionality about questions you're going to ask to just show them you, you, you care to show them. You listen to show you that you're, you're willing to do the little things and you're not just there for the transact.

It's funny, I was laughing when you were talking about like the, the layered, layered, layered questions. Shout out Lizette if you're listening. So Lizette was a rep of mine. Gosh, now six, seven years ago. And we used to call it a lisette because she would put like five questions into one. So tell me, like, what's going on over there? Like, how's the team? How's growth? Like, what are you looking to do this year? Like, she's like, hey, hey. Five different questions. And we used to laugh about it because like she worked at it and she got so much better. But when she got excited, she, we call it the Lizette. She would put seven questions, like together. I'm like, okay, space those out. Slow down. We're all right. So I like the, the ted, right? So tell, explain, describe as like as a framework combined with that, that Pause, just pause for the second. Tell me about this. Can you explain that? Describe what that's doing or describe how that feels. So I really like that as a framework. And then you've mentioned, okay, you're taking notes but bring up like, how do you show someone you're listening? They talk about active listening, passive listening, repeating. How do you show someone that you're actually listening so they feel heard. Because I like that you called it out. Right. Hearing is subconscious, but people want to make sure they feel heard. So how do I make sure that Casey knows I'm hearing him right, that you feel heard right now?

Well, in person, I think you said it. You said it. You repeat back what they've said. So maybe use their name in the conversation. So Katie, what I'm hearing is this. And these are the things that you're looking to accomplish. Tell me, do I have that right? Like repeat back those things during the conversation. I think when you use their name, you keep them engaged so they are going to be listening. I think written wise. One of the best things I got taught was a power of a great meeting recap. So and it's a great way to save time too. So let's say we meet. I might say, hey, Katie, thank you. This is, I'm going to speak it. But how it would be written, it might be like, Katie, thank you for your time. I want to take a minute to, to actually take. Hold on. Before I send the meeting recap, I'm going to tell the prospect, I'm going to send them a meeting recap and I want to make sure that they know that's coming. I let them know it's going to be like an executive brief, not a senior thesis. Got like, you know, this massive long email and to articulate and make sure that we capture the key things we talked about and so they're ready for it. And then when I, when I do it, I say here are the things we talked about here. That here are the problems that exist. Here are the things that you are looking for assistant with. Please let me know if I've missed anything along the way. Blah, blah, blah, something like that. When it's done correctly and you know the client's engaged, they will respond back, Casey, this looks perfect. Exactly. And you know what? As I thought about it, you made me think of two other areas I think you can help with. Then they'll redline it. And so I think when you do that way not only do you are you sensing the health of the deal potentially. You're, you're showing them the client that you listened. You document everything. You made it easy for them to really share what we just talked about. And once they give you a note back like, yep, this looks great now you just copy and paste and put it right into your CRM. You have to go about and type all these things just literally. I literally would copy and paste and put it in CRM. So for me, those are the things I do. Another thing to be thinking about is your. Are you slouched down? You know, how is your tone when you talk back? Like, when you back to them? How is your curiosity in your voice? They can. They can feel that. They can hear that. It's kind of like, I mean, Uncle Rico moment here. College football when. When I don't know that you should. Uncle Rico's legit. But my buddies would say, hey, Jaycox, what kind of receivers you got this year? I'm like, oh, I got great. I'm just got him, Tied him around. They run great routes. They're like, we talking about running great routes, you know, And I think for, like, when you could, you know, articulate those things. The same thing as why, if you ask great questions, your tone of your voice can articulate how a question sounds versus just this monotone. You just. You feel like you're, you know, no one wants to be around people like that, like, have energy. And it all goes back to that word behind my wall, which is belief.

I love the call out there on tone because, like, in my. In my scripting and playbooks, it's literally bullet points on what tone you're supposed to be using in this part of the call or this type of question. Because, I mean, you're probably familiar with this too. It sounds like you're very well read, like, in this space.

Right.

Like tonal discon. Tonal congruence. Right. Can get out of line if I'm asking a question, but I don't sound like I care or I'm asking a question about, like, so, like, how can I help you? But I don't sound like I want to help. It actually lights up the fear part of the brain. There's. The tone doesn't match the ask. And it creates distrust at a subconscious level where, like, what you're asking me doesn't sound like you actually care about that. And it lights up. It lights up like the fear receptors in our brain. Like, something's off here even without us understanding it. And so you mentioned curiosity because this is another place of, like, you know, a curious tone. How do you teach somebody that, like, 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. I'll give you an example that one of my favorite questions I ask every new prospect to start even in meetings, I'm, I'm still going on. And it was a question I got taught late in my sales career that I it's gold if it's done right. So the example would be say we're going to go to a meeting. You, 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, thanks for your time today. I'm role playing this out loud. Thanks for time. Today I prepared an agenda for some things that 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. 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, 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. Describe why those things are going to be important for you to accomplish in today's meeting. And I, and I found when doing that it just allows you to like it maybe and tell yourself, hey, be curious. Be curious for the meeting. Like almost like kind of self talk which is super important as well that we haven't touched on yet. And then, I mean, how you get good at it. You practice. We talked about that before we started recording. And sellers, if you're not practicing, you might as well call and tell your client. Hey, it's Casey with ABC Company. I'm excited to practice on you today. You got a minute? And watch how long they'll stay on the phone call. Probably about three seconds.

Ah, it's just. It's just so true, right, reps, you're out there practicing on your prospect, and all the sales leaders hear this right now. Because if your reps are not practicing with you or their managers or each other, they're practicing on the prospect. Give telling someone what you want them to do. Hey, Casey, we need you to start doing these TED questions, right? Tell, explain, you know, describe. The reps are like, oh, no, that's. That's a great idea. Yeah, I'm going to go do it. That's not coaching, right? They didn't do it yet. There was no feedback given. There was no delivery there. So that practice is so important. But I love the call out here, y', all is we're practicing the words, which it's just as important, if not more important to practice the tone. Do you sound curious?

Right?

Like, especially role playing, like face to face or over zoom. I have them turn their cameras off. I don't look. So I just want to listen. How does it sound? Does it sound curious? Do they sound what we call bottled enthusiasm? Because sometimes reps can go too far with enthusiasm. Hey, Casey, it's KD over today. So excited to meet with you.

This is.

I mean. Oh, whoa, whoa. That bottle of enthusiasm. Honestly, Casey, I'm just. I'm really excited to chat with you today. You know, have a few things I wanted to walk through and then wanted to hear that too, with that, like, that bottled enthusiasm around it with the curiosity. So, okay, so now we're starting to check some boxes we got. Listening, hearing TED questions. Then what?

Now we have to check our ego. So there's an invisible hat rack right here. You can't see it, but it's right next to me. And every time I sit down my desk here, I hang my ego at my desk. We all are replaceable. As great as you are. And what I love telling my. And so that the Chapter 5 is about practice letting your authentic self shine at the number one reason to be ourself. Corny dad joke coming. Because everybody else is already taken.

Hell, yeah.

You gotta be yourself. If if leader, if you're telling your rep to fake it till you make it. Worst advice ever. Rep if anybody's told you that. Worst advice ever. John Wooden said the number one reason to always tell the truth, because you didn't have to do. You don't have to worry. Remember what story you told?

Remember?

Yep. Yep. So when we think about being our authentic self, when we think about practicing, that's where we have to check their ego. Leaders remove fear. Encourage people to. They want to mess up. But the number one thing, leader, go first. Don't make the reps. Role play first. You go first. Let them know it's a safe environment. Let them know that, hey, we're, we're excited to practice today, Katie. I like using metaphors and examples to further prove that point. So I'll ask, I'll, I'll ask people, you know, tell me the last time you, you took an airplane ride. They'd be like, ah, last is last time. Went to Austin, Seattle. Great, man. How was it? Oh, it's great. Good service? Yeah, yeah, loved it. Okay, tell me how you'd feel if the pilot said, if he or she said, hey, welcome to, you know, ABC Airlines. I gotta be honest with you, I haven't, I haven't practiced in about two years. I don't know what a lot of these buttons do up here. They look pretty fun. They might, I don't know really what they do. We're gonna skip the walk around. I think we have gas and I'm pretty sure we have a flight plan filed. But other than that, man, welcome aboard. We're glad to have you. Like, would you want to be on that flight?

No one would even just hearing it as a story. Right?

Like, geez, right? But why do we run our businesses like that? We're running our businesses like that airline that has no clue, doesn't practice. And even like when I speak to clients, I make them do a dry run with me before I go. And they're like, why would you do that? And I'm like, because I want to further say when I, when I talk about practice in front of your whole sales team, I'm going to say that I'm not just fully, you know what, I backed it up and we practiced an hour before and, and I got feedback real quick.

That's like, for when you're doing sales training, you practice like with the leader or with some people on not, not a sales call. Like, you're not calling the prospect. Okay. I was like, wait, wait, wait, time out. Do a Dry run with the prospect before. You don't think you. Okay, I just want to clarify. My bad on that one, man. So. Okay, I like that.

Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah. So like with speaking, like, I'll do a drive run with, with the client on. Hey, how does this content sound? We've, we've prepped for it, but, but I found when we, when we do that, they even appreciate it because then it's more genuine. It's authentic. It's this. Okay, this guy's not full of stuff. He, he truly cares and he's gonna, he's gonna walk the walk. I just think too often we, we're afraid to say what we don't know. We're afraid to ask for help. We're afraid to practice. I mean, too often. I'm sure you've heard that Sellers sales rep say this. Oh, I don't like the role play, Katie, because I don't sound like that in front of the customer bs. I, I can't, 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 learned 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, People might say that's corny, but I believe in that stuff and it works. And the number one way I, I back that stat up is, do you remember Bill Buckner? Mm. And why do you remember Bill Buckner?

Because he let the ball through his legs to the mets, I believe.

19. 1986 World Series. When. 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 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 those. I'm going to let a ground ball go to my legs to lose a 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 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.

So it's funny, man. So I'm on the road right now, but actually my computer's on my journal where I'm doing my affirmations every day at my desk. I have what I have my being cards. Who am I being? I am confident. I am motivated. I am disciplined. I am the best sales coach in the world. I take care of my family. I bring joy to my daughters. Like, I have my being cards right? And every single day, they're right there in front. Because again, back to that brain science. The brain doesn't know the difference mentally. So Buckner has played over in his head over and over and over again. Lifting up, right? Lifting up before the ball got there, because that's what he's been seeing in his head. So when the moment comes, the brain's like, I know what to do here. I've been doing this. I know I'm gonna lift up. I'm gonna lift up and that ball's gonna go through. And so I think that's so, so important. I love that you call out self talk because that, you know. Also the theme of this podcast is live better, sell better. Not just the sell better part. Like, if we can live better, we have intention in here. We've got some self talk in here of, like, that end result that you want to see. So, okay, let's keep this going. So we've checked our ego, right? We've checked our ego. We took the hat off, we put it by the desk. Now what? Right? As we think about where we are now, we set our intention. We're listening. We're asking good questions. We have the right tone, right? Like, we believe what we do matters. We're putting them first. We've checked our ego. Now what?

The last chapter that talks about in relationship, to win the relationship is it takes time. You have to be patient. We have to have perseverance, but mainly we have to be patient. Some of the best relationships I had in my career took time, and I had to prove that I'm Not. I'm not just calling them once and walking away. I had to call with intentionality. I had to. These slow, chipping away things, earning little nuggets of trust, following through. Once I did that and I allowed and then once I know that and I would love to, even when those prospects that were hard to get into, I love those because I know once you cracked them, you got them forever.

Forever, Forever.

You know, so just like anything, like most competitive people, I'll say me is one of them. My gap is patience. So I have to be very self aware. And so my back to you said self affirmations, which I love that Katie is I do something called the HA method, which I have. I am, I will. Every morning I say those statements to myself one more time. So it's a four minute. It's a four minute meditation. So you breathe for the first minute. The second minute is I have statements out loud and you're going to say these physical, emotional or opportunistic. Like I have an opportunity to, to join this podcast. I have an opportunity to be a great dad. I have an opportunity to be a great leader. I have an opportunity to be present in intentionality with my questions. Okay, let that minute go. Third minute is I am statements. Physical, emotional, opportunistic. Fourth minute is I will physical, emotional or opportunistic speak truth into existence. We have limitless minds. We say think big, go far, someone's going to do it, why not you? And but back to, back to patience. So it's. I have to be self aware about that. And then when I feel it getting out of whack, I have to get back to me after one. I have to notice a difference, but get back to center on my values of what drives me and realizing that I have a choice when things don't go my way or if I'm getting impatient. I have a choice to say, why am I getting like almost self talk and have this conversation with myself. Casey, why, why are you freaking out, man? Chill out. Not the big a deal. And then I think we can slow down and know that any, any deal we win. Any prospect, we win. You know, I tell a story in the book, I think in this right now that I was a part of our, my former company, one of the largest deals in their history. Three months later, the thing completely fell apart. A lot of it was completely out of my control. After we got through it, the vice president, this company said, casey, the day you won it, day you lost, you're the same guy. Thank you. Right. I Had to persevere. I had to be patient when things were getting really, really rocky, right? But I had to ask myself, do you think the client said, man, I can't wait to lose budget and call and ruin Casey's day and ruin this company. That's going to be a blast. I can't wait to do that? No, I mean, stuff happens. So how are we going to respond? Just like in football, when I call play and they, oh, we can't block that. I got to change land scrimmage. I got to be able to persevere through it. I got to be able to. When things are. When I have a bad week, am I going to be. Am I going to let that bad week lead to a bad month, to a bad quarter? Or am I going to revert back to chapter five a bit and ask for help, check my ego? Or am I going to pretend everything's fine and just I got my stuff figured out when I don't? And none of us have it all figured out?

And yes, you just touched on something that we didn't go deep on. This idea of asking for help under, check the ego. Talk a little bit more about that. When it comes to building a relationship of like, how do you ask for help? Who. Who do you ask for help? When do you ask for help if we're trying to build a relationship?

Well, I think about it internally and externally. I think, you know, I was a top rep in our company for 10 years straight nationally. And one in time, new people joined our, our, our, our company just to kind of like let them know the environment I wanted to be a part of. I would ask them for help. Like, hey, can you take a look at this email? How does this sound? And they almost look. Would look like intimidators scared. I'm like, why are you asking me? This is like my second day. I'm like, that's exactly what I'm asking. Because you have fresh perspective. Like, you might be able to see something I'm not seeing. And if they see the number one person the company from again, based on revenue, but doesn't mean I was number one. There's many other ways people could be number one. You show that that's the type of environment you want to be in. Even sometimes asking for help from a prospect. If you want to go get an introduction, like, hey, I'd love to meet this person. Do you think you could help me out? Could you ask for help? Hey, I, you know, ask for help. If you're really, really anything, let your Mind get curious, like, what are some areas, you know, maybe you want to get. You want to learn more about networking events, you want to learn more about an. A LinkedIn group, but you don't know how to get there. Ask for how to get involved. Right? Don't assume that people are reading your mind and they, they want to try to all help you. And so I love asking for help because I think it, yeah, I think it's the way we all grow.

And you can teach through asking for help. You build the connections to asking for help. Right? Like, that's always my advice when, you know, I hire a new manager is, hey, go and learn from your people. Don't learn about your people. Learn from your people first. Let them teach you. Let them teach you their world, their role, the ups, the downs, the ins and outs. Like, learn from them actually builds a relationship more than you telling them what to do. Right? And it's funny because this is kind of going to. The last question I wanted to ask here as we start to wrap up is it brings me back to a conversation I had with David Karch and Sean Gentry. These are two reps of mine from a while back. Now, both of them were some of the best relationship builders I ever had on my team. Like, they could, they had that connection, that rapport with people. They'll do it quickly. But time and time again, deals would, would push, right? They, they wouldn't close right at end. And I was like, y', all. The reason you build the relationship is so you can make the ask. So you can make the ask. That's actually why you have that relationship. So you can say, hey, it's time to do this. Hey, let's get you going. So how do you kind of. All right, so I'm focusing on building this relationship. That's great, Casey, but I still need to close the deal. How do you. This is a horrible question because you'll get what I'm asking. Like, how do you use the relationship to help bring the deal across? I think you get what I'm asking for. This the wrong word, but hopefully you follow me. They're like, so, okay, we're doing this, how do we then bring it home?

Yeah, I think it goes back to which I touched on a second ago. And I like, sometimes I like answering questions with stories, so I hope that's okay. But when I first got into coaching, I did not. Like I mentioned you before we started recording, I did not seek out to do this. I was a 20 year corporate guy, rep, executive leader, and Then when I left to write my book, I was like, okay, what am I going to do? And when I was. When I was. I had a relationship with this individual through, through my time at my previous employer to then into my entrepreneurial world, still not quite knowing. And it was exactly at that point she was about to hire a coach. And I started asking questions. Why? I was like, well, tell me why you're. What are you looking for? Well, we're looking for this and this and this. And in my mind, I'm like, why wouldn't you just close it right there? And so I got off the phone, didn't. Because it wasn't clear yet. I didn't have clarity that I was going to be doing this. And then I had this conversation with this gentleman up in Toronto and he gave me the best punch in the face ever when he gave me the advice of. I was asking him if I should get into coaching. And I wasn't sure if I should or shouldn't because I wasn't certified. And he looked at me and said, casey, you've done all these things. Get out of my mother effing face and go help people. You wrote a book about it. Go. And right when he told me that, I picked up the phone, I called the person back who I was just talking to. I said, I'm your coach. Hire me, and here's why. I spent 20 years in the industry you're selling to. I'm not going to coach you or teach your reps based on what I think you should do. I'm going to coach them on what I've failed at and what I personally succeeded at. I'm not making this stuff up. And so for me, I had all the passion, all the belief, because I know I could solve those problems because I've sat in her pain, I've lived that. And I. And I. And I was like. And I had nothing to lose, right? I'd rather. I'd rather me try to take a swing at it because one, I believe in what I do matters. Two, I know what I could help her. But of all those things I did along the way to get her to leave for comfortably sharing with me what she's looking to do. And she's like, you're right. Why wouldn't I hire you? And that was my first client. Shout out to Leslie if you're listening.

Let's go, Leslie, let's go.

Now.

I love this man because. And what I'm loving about this conversation is it's one of these soft skills That I believe can be a hard skill. You can learn how to do this the right way. Yes. There are some people that maybe do this a little bit better naturally, or they're more this way, they're that way. But if you're intentional right back to that word on all of these steps, you truly can build great relationships. And, and I love you said this early on. I think we were recording. Right. Win the person before you win the deal. Because once that relationship's there tends to open the door for even more deals down the road. Right. Whether that's through an. Maybe it's a referral, but also maybe it wasn't the best fit and you were willing to not risk the relationship to close the deal. But you go, you know what, Casey? This isn't the right fit for you. I wouldn't be a good consultant, I wouldn't be a good friend if I was trying to sell this to you like, this isn't the best fit. And that also let you win that person down the road. Maybe when it is a good fit, that relationship is still intact. And so I think that I'm loving this as, as a topic because it's just not.

You said something real quick that. So that made me think so the very. One of the opening lines of my book is when my 7, my son was 7. He's 16 now. When he was 7, he said, dad, what do you, what do you do for your job? And I couldn't say, well, dad, dad, great question, Buddy writer. Dad is a business development professional.

And I.

And I provide staff augmentation services and consulting projects for E Commerce. He'd be like, what the hell are you talking about, dad? So I dumbed it down for a seven year. I said, you know what, bud? Great question. Dad makes friends for a living.

Nice.

He's like, what do you mean? He's like, well, I make friends. So I go out and I get friends to like me and get their friends introduce me to their friends. And then when a friend needs help, I make sure I give them the best friendship service possible. And then sometimes they decide to pay me money. Sometimes when they, when they ask for help but I don't think I'm the best friend, I go find them a different friend who can help them better than I can help them. And when I'm honest like that, they trust me. They're going to follow through with me. They're not afraid to ask me questions. I'm not going to be afraid to ask them questions. And we're going to have Gaps. We're going to talk about what we are good at, what we're not good at, and then that's. We treat how we treat friends, you know? And my buddies gave me a hard time, like, dude, you can't tell your kid he makes friends for. He's gonna be on the recess asking for dough. I'm like, come on, man, he's not gonna do that. But the point is, when we. When we slow down to think about these things in a really simplistic way, it doesn't need to be this difficult, right? And I'm looking at a. You can't see, but I'm looking at a sign. I'm a big Ted Lasso fan, and this sign says, be curious, not judgmental. Right? And, man, I still need to get.

On the Ted Lasso game. I get so many references, and I haven't seen any. You all right? I gotta get.

I watched it twice, cried both times.

Ah, well, I don't want to cry, but it was.

It's a good cry. It's a good cry.

Okay, good cry, then I'm all for it. So, dude, Casey, this is amazing, man. I got one final question. Well, I should tend to have two questions. I don't want to rely in our relationship. I got two questions left for you. Right? So the first one. Right. And you've touched on this a little bit throughout all this, Right. But the name of the podcast is Live Better, Sell Better. Because I have this weird idea, right, that, like, if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more joy, more fulfillment, more energy, everything else, the sales also improve. What would your live better advice be for the people listening for.

For me, Live better. Well, I'll tell you how I live better. And it's up to other people to choose. They want to do it. Taking care of your body, exercise, have a spiritual framework. I'm not saying you got to go to church every week. I don't go to church, but I have a relationship with something out there people call God, people call it universe. Something I believe in, something else is helping us. I journal every morning, I write. My opening line every time is, thanks for waking me up. God, get another day. I start with gratitude in everything I do, when we start with gratitude, and then I look for the positive of what people can offer me or how I can offer them. Live better is how can you connect with other people and be a boomerang but don't keep score, Right? I love connecting people. So living better from a mindset perspective, staying focused on those things I think setting goals is a great way to live better and tell people about your goals so they can help you, hold you accountable. Don't be afraid. To fail is a way to live better. I fail every day, and when I fail, I love telling my kids how I failed.

Oh, yeah, I love. Those are the fun stories, right? Again, establishing the idea of, like, it's okay to fail. It's okay to mess up, right? I share, like, when I mess up and when I do things wrong and when I get, you know, something went haywire somewhere and, like, we laugh about it and go through it. And so, Casey, man, that was like a micro episode right at the end there. Like, you know, journaling, gratitude, spiritual framework, goal setting, asking for help, not keeping score and being okay with failure, I think are so many great ways to live better. My man. Where can people get more of you? Right? This is my last question. Where can they get more of you? Where can they find you? Where are you putting out content? You've mentioned the book. Where can they find it? Like, where can people get more Casey Jacox in their life?

I am on LinkedIn. That's a great way to connect. You can go to my website, which is caseyjaycox.com there's, there's. There is videos, there's testimonials, there's information about my podcast. If you want to buy the book, you can get it on Amazon, you can via Kindle, you can get a paperback. And then this year, I just recorded the audio, the audible version myself. Um, I've read the book seven or eight times through the editing process. I've learned something every time I read it, and I'm the author. That's sometimes embarrassing to say, but the proof is I didn't create these things. These things, these six things I've wrote about, have been around forever, and we all have gaps. And so I think for people that want to learn more about those things, check me out on the areas. I said I am on Twitter a little bit, but I would say the main way to connect me is through LinkedIn.

Hell, yeah. Well, dude, I love this, man. Like, really, really enjoyed. I appreciate the inside, the energy, the insides here, man. Thank you so much for your time. This is great.

I'm honored. Thanks for having me.