Win The Relationship, Not Just the Deal
- Susan Tatum
- Apr 8
- 29 min read
In this episode of Stop the Noise, Casey Jacox joins Susan Tatum to discuss two critical client acquisition skills that many independent consultants overlook: intentional listening and meaningful follow-up. Drawing from his bestselling book, Casey shares practical advice and mindset shifts that help consultants build stronger relationships and win more clients—without ever feeling "salesy."
Notes from the Show
Listening is a skill, not a trait. Most sellers “hear,” but few truly listen. Casey explains how to practice listening intentionally and the impact it has on building trust and standing out.
Use the TED framework. Ask questions that start with “Tell me,” “Explain,” or “Describe” to uncover real insights and deepen your understanding of a prospect’s needs.
Documentation fuels effective follow-up. Remembering personal and business details gives you a major advantage. A CRM is not busywork - it’s your relationship memory bank.
Follow up with context, not just a check-in. Reference specific details from past conversations to show you listened and care, and to move the conversation forward.
Lose the pressure to “win the deal.” Instead, aim to win the relationship. Showing genuine curiosity and offering help - even if it means referring someone else - builds long-term value and trust.
Quotes: “If you believe what you do matters, you’re never selling - you’re solving.”
“The best business development people are curious storytellers.”
What’s Inside:
The important difference between listening and hearing.
TED questions build connections.
How to accurately and efficiently document for follow-ups.
How your discovery can get deals stuck.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Transcribed by AI Susan Tatum 0:37
Hi everybody. Welcome back to stop the noise today my guest is Casey Jacox, who is an author, a keynote speaker, a podcast host, a sales and leadership performance coach and the number one sales producer for 10 years straight at a publicly traded company. So I think you've got a lot to share, Casey, and welcome to stop the noise.
Casey Jacox 0:59
Thank you for having me, Susan. I'm honored to be here, and I'm excited to have a great conversation with you.
Susan Tatum 1:03
I want you to tell us a little bit about yourself before we dive into it, but just to step this up ahead of time, is that Casey wrote a book called Win the relationship, not the deal, and I am now on a mission to have everybody read this book. Not that you can see that I'm holding it up because you're probably listening to this, but there's so much good stuff in here and in talking beforehand. Narrowed it down to two areas. One is listening versus hearing, and documentation and follow up. These were two chapters of the book that I really underlined almost every word in there, and I think it's so important for client acquisition, for consultants. So we'll get into that. But first, how'd you get where you are
Casey Jacox 1:42
Like today? How'd I get to where I am?
Susan Tatum 1:46
Tell us that story,
Casey Jacox 1:48
yeah, well, I mean, I'll say the long winded, the long wind of a short version is first and foremost, married of 26 years high school sweetheart. We just celebrate 26th she obviously keeps me humble and grounded and organized and all that good stuff. I got two great kids of a son in college and a daughter who's a junior. I dedicated the book to them, but I was a former college athlete turned sales person in the staffing and consulting world. Was there for 20 years, moved into an executive role after having obviously a right guy, right time, right place, by having a good 10 year run where I was a number one rep. But then the goal my CEO was, like, how do we create mini Casey's? And I was it can always made me feel a little bit uncomfortable, but the goal was to try to figure out, like, how to, like, train the mindset of and a lot of that mindset was kind of unconscious competence. I mean, I was doing things without knowing I was doing it. And so then I, when I helped lead a sales transformation at the age of 41 which is years ago, which is a huge year growth for me that year, I learned a lot about curiosity value based selling understanding how to ask great questions. And then I really took my follow up skills to another level, which I included that in the book, which is around page 83 84 I give a real life example of what a follow up looks like, in terms of when I leave the meeting. I left in 19 after whenever you spend 20 years at a company, it could be like when you leave, like, Oh, it must have been nightmare. It was actually the best divorce ever that I left on great terms. I left that company called K force. I think the world of them great memories are just the role they wanted me to do was, I'd done it for years, and there really wasn't a role for me. So they just said, Hey, let's just say, Great time to part ways. And so I took some time off. I called it the data on sabbatical, and that's right. Then I wrote the book from nine to 1130 I wrote for every day, some days it was good, some days was bad. And the best editor I had was my wife, who said, Hey, this doesn't sound like you. I think you should change that. And then so I started a podcast too. In that first year, the kind of my sabbatical per se, called the quarterback dad cast, where I interviewed dads and I hear their story. And then a year, then that second year of my cult, the non compete. That's where coach, the coaching, and executive coaching and speaking found me, and it's some of the most rewarding work I've ever done in my entire life. I did not mean to do this, but I feel like it's a calling Susan
Susan Tatum 3:51
well, you've obviously, I mean, if the book is any indication, you do a fabulous job of it, and I'm glad you're sharing it with the rest of us, and not just inside one company.
Casey Jacox 4:00
Yeah. Well, thank you. One of the biggest. I wrote the book for four reasons. I wrote it for the man or woman who just graduates college and they get a first job, and the company says, Hey, you gotta go out and build relationships, go out and grow relationships. And they say, Yeah, okay. But then they're like, Well, how do I do it? Well, the book teaches you that. I wrote it for someone who may be stuck, maybe north of 30 years old, that kind of forgot some of the basic habits of fundamentals relationship building. This book, I think, solves that problem. I wrote it for colleges and universities to help teach some emotional intelligence skills in college, to help get people thinking about ways to the art, not just the science but the art of relationship building. And then last I wrote it for really an executive that might say, wow. So this guy was a nerd born guy, and all he did was focus on those six things daily, but it helped produce those results. I want to buy that book for my entire team, and that's kind of what usually what happens when they bring me into speak at like a sales kickoff or a leadership event, but it's they're very simple things, but they're very hard to do.
Susan Tatum 4:54
So most of our listeners are consultants that built careers in. In the corporate world, big companies, or the large consulting firms or whatever. Now they are. They're bringing their expertise to their own clients. They a lot of them never planned on having to do client acquisition. And they think of it as being they think of the sales as being icky. I mean, we know that an awful lot of people do feel that way, and I think that's because it's being done wrong, but it's the things that you touch on this book. I find that people, they can be in their 50s and 60s, and they really don't know, or they don't think they know about how to build relationships. They've never been taught it, the ones that were in leadership positions that probably got some training about it, but it is something that went foreign to a lot of people, and in your book, you I'll start stop raving here in a minute, but you just brought it down to things that are easily applied. And you can just, you can put stuff into practice right away with this book. So the learning versus hearing part of it somewhere, I keep seeing studies that show that one of the biggest complaints that buyers have about sales people, and which could be, if you're a seller doer, then you're also in the sales area, one of the biggest complaints that buyers have is that we don't listen. They don't feel like they're being listened to.
Casey Jacox 6:15
The number one answer, you're right.
Susan Tatum 6:17
Okay
Casey Jacox 6:18
so you know what the second answer is.
Susan Tatum 6:21
I don't know, tell us.
Casey Jacox 6:22
So I got taught this. This gentleman, he called it seller Deficit Disorder and he called it so the two reasons why clients or customers or targets, whatever you say, do not like salespeople is that they don't listen and they don't understand my business.
Susan Tatum 6:33
That was in your book too, wasn't it? Yeah, that's another good topic that we could go into about understanding the business but what is the difference between listening and hearing
Casey Jacox 6:41
listening is conscious, hearing is subconscious, meaning that I can hear things that are going to distract me. But listening is a skill. Listening you can practice listening most people in client acquisition or selling. And I want to touch on something secondly, because selling, it's if people say it's icky, that's a story you're telling yourself. People at home, I know you can't see me, but Susan, there's a sign behind me that says Believe. And so that has a little bit of a tabla theme. And I had mentors ask me all the time my career says, Casey, do you believe what you do matters? I said, Yeah. And he goes, would you ever try to do something where only you win but the client loses? I go, No, I would never do that. He goes, of course, you wouldn't. And so if you believe what you do matters, if you believe you can solve a problem for somebody, if you believe you have your company, has the experience, if you believe you have something you can offer that's called Value Based selling. Everybody's selling in life, husbands and wife, someone's gonna sell someone that we're going to dinner, Mexican. Well, I want Chinese, or whoever's gonna someone's winning that deal. I wanna go to vacation elite. Well, I wanna go to Florida. Well, someone's gonna win that deal. So I think sometimes I would encourage people to like, if you're home thinking about that, no matter what industry you have, everybody's selling. And so I think when you get that correct mindset right, you'll it'll help you be in a better spot to listen. But listening takes practice, and most people in your client acquisition or sales, they like to win it, meaning they show up to the client meeting and they practice on the client and but if listening is if you truly understand, maybe the problems you solve for potential customers, how you do it differently or better, and maybe where's your proof? Well, you can ask questions, and I teach a framework called Ted, which stands for tell me, explain, describe. That's the way I like coach my clients to ask questions. Sounds simple, really hard to do. Takes a lot of practice, but listening to me means I turn my notifications off. Listening to me means I turn my phone off. Listening me means I'm not going to be typing in the background when someone's talking. I'm gonna look them in the eye listening means I might ask a second and third and fourth level question, meaning that Susan, I might ask you, Hey, Susan, tell me one or two things that I got what How's you excited about today? Well, A and B, great. Tell me more about that. Most people don't ask. Tell me more about that. Most people don't say, hey. Well, describe the impact of those goals if you achieve them today. Most people, they ask a question. They're already thinking about, What can I say next? How can I talk? How can I sell? which proves you're not listening, that's hearing. And if there's any men listening today, husbands, any gift that we can give a spouse when your wife knows you're listening, that's great, a great successful outcome for you. But anybody, if you're listening, it's people love to be listening. Listen. If people know that you heard them, you listened. You actually and then you remembered what you heard about listened about what they told you. That's where that's the next step, which will probably lead into follow up here in a second, but long one answer, listening is a skill. You can get better at it. You can practice. I have a couple ideas I can share in workshop framework. I actually can share it exercise, if you want. Now people want to use it. So I usually use this when I run a workshop on listening. So imagine if you and I were sitting paired up, and let's say that I was, but let's say this water people can't see this. Water bottle has got to moderate it. And the water bottle says, All right, Casey, for a minute, your job is to tell Susan something you're really excited about, something passionate in your life could be your family, your kids, your job, whatever it may be, for a minute. Okay, now, Susan, your job is to make Casey feel like the worst person in the United States. I want you to look distracted. I want you don't be engaged. I want you to feel like he is just and Casey keep going as hard as you can for a minute. Boom, we started. And so I'll be like, All right, Susan, so I'm so excited about this vacation. You're like, wait what? Hold on. I'm busy. And you just make you
Susan Tatum 9:56
Picking up the phone. I'm looking at the cameras someplace else, and.
Casey Jacox 10:00
Yeah, yeah, boom timer goes off. But how often do we actually do that? More often than not, people do that on accident. They don't do it on purpose, but they're busy. We got our internal teams, our chat, our Slack channel going. We got all these things that are distracting us. We so now the water bottle. So the next part is, exercise is okay. Now for a minute, Casey, you're gonna tell Susan the same story, but Susan, your job is to listen, make him feel like the last person on Earth and the most important person on earth. And then I want you to ask follow up questions. Wow, tell me more about that. Casey, wow. Describe that. That sounds like such a cool thing, and you're gonna make me feel great, which makes my confidence go up. Now the moderator, this is the trick in this little workshop. You don't stop the time at a minute. You let the time go. And what happens you just you can feel the energy and the noise in the room start to grow and grow. And usually when I run it, I'll stop at the five minutes of water bottle. The moderator, he or she stops at the five minutes, and I'll say, okay, time's up. How'd that feel? How was the difference? And people like, Oh my God, it was amazing. I go, did that minute go by fast? They're like, Yeah, it sure. Did I go. Well, guess what? We went for five minutes. That's why. And everybody laughs and but I'm like, so think about what just happened. Think about the impact you can have on any relationship you meet. They're not going to remember that business card, they're not going to remember your pretty PowerPoint. They're not going to remember your one page. It's like, they're going to remember it's like, I call this the My angel experience. How did you make people feel? Man, Susan asked great questions. I can't believe she remembered my birthday. How did she remember my son put golf in college? Wow, that was so refreshing talking to somebody. They actually listened. And those are things we have control over. If you want to slow down to make that impact on everybody you meet.
Susan Tatum 11:26
Psychological benefits also would so the person that the role that I was not playing in the in workshopping this, you're going to feel better because this other you're getting such good feedback, non verbal feedback, maybe from the person that you're talking to, that everybody comes out of there feeling better. It's a good conversation. And you're going to set yourself apart from all of the other people that are being bad listeners
Casey Jacox 11:53
which is a lot
Susan Tatum 11:54
the one they remember
Casey Jacox 11:55
I don't even know the percent. I bet it's more than 70% of the world,
Susan Tatum 11:57
probably. And you think about the guys that and this? Well, I say guys, this is one particular guy that was a boss of mine that was the vice president of sales of this tech company, and he could not stop looking around and could not stop looking at his phone. I assume that when he was with a client, he did a better job of making them be the star of the show, but he was just like a hummingbird everywhere, but looking at who paying attention to you. Yeah, and that's not fun. And you said it's important to be confident. I think you said that in your book, and not be thinking about what you're going to say next. How do you do that? How do you prepare for that?
Casey Jacox 12:36
I do it by asking a question in the beginning of a meeting, and I had to get over my own negative self talk. When I first practiced this question, I had to get off that, get out of my own head of the story, because in our mind, we have over I've heard science from 60 to 80,000 thoughts a day. Of those thoughts 75 to 85% of those thoughts are negative. So we either choose,
Susan Tatum 12:57
usually 2am
Casey Jacox 12:58
Yeah, exactly. So we usually listen to these thoughts or and we let them go out there, or we just say, no, not thought does not belong here. And I'm gonna, like, kind of get ahead of the that thought, but the question that I got taught that now I whenever I go out and meet with a new client, I'll say, so if I was like, let's say that I called you Thursday last week, and today's Tuesday, and to schedule a meeting, I'd say, Susan a I know we spoke last week, some information prepared based on the things we spoke about, but just in case things change, describe what would be an ideal outcome for you and the time we have today. And so that question, because I do want to know what you want to get at it. I don't want to be here for me. I want to be here for you, and I have to believe that, and I have to like conviction. So if I believe that, and I ask it with good tone and good confidence, now I'm going to make you feel like, well, I've heard that question before. Well, I'd like to talk about A, B and C. Great. Tell me why. Susan, so now my agenda, I still have things I'm going to talk about, but I'm quickly thinking on my feet to narrow it specifically on you. And now I'm going to, like, get the answers to the test. Now, when I have the answers to the test, believe it or not, I still have a 4.0 I've messed that up yet. So I think when you know what the person wants to talk about, your confidence will rise. When you don't know if they want to talk about you're guessing, your confidence will go down. Then you're guessing. You're just then we start talking too much. So I feel like suit too many sellers and people are trying to, like, promote their business. They focus on memorizing what they do. And I think about, for anybody who plays golf, even if you don't play golf, this analogy hopefully will stick. So in golf, there's 18 holes, there's nine, there's the front nine, nine holes, which you leave the clubhouse, you walk out and on the 10th hole, then you make your way back to 18, you come back to the clubhouse. So think about the first nine holes are all about them, the prospect, the customer, your client. The last 10 holes are all about you. Now you've earned the right to talk about things that you believe are important to the client. Maybe problems you can solve, services that you can offer that might make their life better. And if you can't, that's okay too. Find him a new friend, which I talked about in the book. Find him someone else that might help them out. Don't convince yourself, yeah, don't convince yourself that. Well, I got and since I'm here, I better try to sell her something. That's when we get into the icky world. And then I think sometimes the power of saying no, like, you know what, I don't think we're the right fit. But let me see if I can try to find someone else.
Susan Tatum 15:00
I think that nothing can create trust faster than doing exactly that. It's just being straight out honest. I'm not the right one for you, but I think that I know somebody that might be kind of introduce you and they're instantly, it's like she didn't push it, she didn't try to take something she wasn't good at, she didn't like
Casey Jacox 15:19
She win. That's what winning the relationship means. If you want to win, I'd rather win people all day long, because if I win people, I'm gonna win my time, and if I have the more people I win, the more chances that they're gonna refer me business long term. Some people think that's naive. Well, it's worked for 49 years of life, and I'm gonna continue to follow that. And it feels good. Feels great, 100%
Susan Tatum 15:37
one of the things that you said in the book was, you'll have more sincere discussions by going into a conversation without expectations. I'd like to hear more about that, because I don't think you mean going into conversations without a plan.
Casey Jacox 15:53
No, you're right. So I like to tell stories, because I think stories always give a better picture. I think I mean an example that will give us that might articulate that that line better. So I was at the end of my corporate career. I was in a career, I was an executive sponsor over one of our accounts, and I had two sellers that were going to go with me on to this account. And I always liked doing prep before. And sometimes I might be the guy that Facebook looks up on Facebook, I look up on LinkedIn. I'm trying to find something to find commonality, because if I find something to have commonality, that's going to lead to rapport, and rapport leads to relationship. Relationship leads to trust. So I figure out that this gentleman who we're meeting with, who's a vice president by the large coffee company in the Seattle area might be able to figure out who that is. And he I found on Facebook that he played football at a high school. Well, that same high school was the place my high school football coach left to come coach my high school. I was like, No way, and they want to stay championship. Before this, my high school football coach came to my high school. So I told my two sales reps. I said, Listen, guys, I know that you I want you talking the majority time. I'm just here for support, but let me lead this thing out of the gate. I think I have a way to really loosen things up to get us a good outcome, but I want to see what happens. If it doesn't work, then you guys take over. And I said, I'll give you the sign. Just don't do a thing. Like, okay, so, and this guy said he only had 30 minutes the VP. And so we go up in the elevator. As we walk out of the elevator towards his office. I go, so you're a big RAM fan, I see. He's like, Huh? I go, didn't answer this question. I go, please tell me, were you on that state championship team? He's like, How'd you know? I go, did you play for Coach Osborne? How do you know Coach Osborne? I go, he was my high school coach. He left your high school to coach me. No way. Guess how long we talked about his high school state championship?
Susan Tatum 17:24
30 minutes. All 30 minutes.
Casey Jacox 17:28
45 and then I'm like, I look down my I am so sorry. We've wasted we've gone way over your time. He's like, No, this has been fantastic. This is what how can I help you guys? I said, Well, I want to introduce you to my two folks. They're working with people in your side, your organization. He goes, this has been so refreshing. Like, think, hey, the fact that you did the prep to figure that out, I don't know how you did it, but the fact that Who are you guys meeting with, and how can I help you? You guys just seem like great people to work with. I'm like, hey, thanks. So was there an expectation on a plan, sure, but was I sincere about wanting to connect with him and build a relationship and make it up by him? Yeah. What did was our outcome. Our outcome was he drew out the org chart for us, our outcome was he introduced us via email to people glowing without ever knowing what we did yet, just because I was how I showed up and made him feel. So that was the first story that popped in my head when you asked my question. So I hope I answered that for you,
Susan Tatum 18:12
one thing that came to my mind while you were talking was the expectations you previously in this conversation said, let the other person set the expectations you're asking them, what is it that you want to get out of it? So now suddenly, the light bulb went on in my head, and now I I completely get it. And I just out of curiosity, Casey, your experience in sales, how often can you find something that's that good of a connection?
Casey Jacox 18:39
More often than you think? I mean, if you go to LinkedIn, if you spend a couple minutes on LinkedIn, down to user groups, they follow newsletters. Who do they post on? Who are they following? How many shared connections do we have? Or they go to college, where they work, where are they from? I mean, there's if you're really curious and present, you can find out a lot about people like, I don't know if you remember in chapter. Well, I reference shout out to Chris Barks my former client at AT and T He loved North Dakota State football. Now, did I go to North Dakota State? No, but I played football in college, so we had that in common. You could talk football, and I knew that North Dakota State played the school called Eastern Washington, where my college football coach again, and Beau Baldwin played against Eastern Washington played against North Dakota. Say a lot. So I said, Oh, hey, what do you you guys think you would beat the Eagles this year? Huh? Yeah, why don't fight this Chris, the head coach Eastern was my college coach. I love following these rivalry. God, it must be fun. God, I'm talking, yeah, and, but what to keep people talking, you have to ask this follow ups. It's, I called it second, third level Ted, which is where the gold is. Again, Ted stands for tell me, explain, describe. And every time I follow up with him, I wouldn't ask about, do you need any Java developers? Do you need any technology consultants for your practice? I'd say, Hey, tell me any new news about North Dakota State. Tell me Did your brother, did he buy tickets? Yeah, for that national championship game. Because I know he told me he always does every year Chris or his kids were in bowling in high school. I mean, I've worked. In six years, I still remember this stuff. Sorry, Chris, if I'm airing out your family, but
Susan Tatum 20:05
Well, the message here is, take the time also. I hear you saying, and I agree with it 100% is that it can't just be surface. It's like we've got some connections in common. Or, hey, you went to Georgia and so did I. Well, maybe that's gonna work, but if it's not done correctly, it's like eye rolling. This is a template. Somebody told them to go find something
Casey Jacox 20:27
right
Susan Tatum 20:28
but the way that you're describing your conversations was it was way beyond that.
Casey Jacox 20:35
The biggest way I think you do it. And I used to talk about this a lot, and sometimes my friends with my old company would give me a hard time, but I believe it. I think your voice and your tone is your friend. So if your tone screams curiosity, they'll know you're genuine, which I am. I truly want to know. And if you're genuinely curious, they're going to want to talk to you. It's kind of like, let me give you two examples. So that question I shared with you a second ago, Hey, Susan, describe what would be an ideal outcome for you in the time we have today. That sounded curious. I would think that sounded genuine. I mean, same words, Hey, Susan, good see, so tell me what you want to get out of today. Same words
Susan Tatum 21:07
sound rushed.
Casey Jacox 21:08
Yeah, angry scripted.
Susan Tatum 21:09
Bored
Casey Jacox 21:10
Yeah, to your point. You said you nailed it. Susan, slow down to, I don't want people spending an hour to prep like because do analysis paralysis, but three to five minutes of Hey, okay, these are people I want to connect with. Well, why? Why would they want to connect with me? What's it? With me? What's in it for them? What problem can I solve for them? How can I share a story? Maybe I've helped someone like them to talk about that in third person that they might be interested in hearing about. But before I am going to talk about that, remember the front nines about them. Hey, you. Your background seems very interesting. I work with a lot of people like you, and I'd love to scale the time to learn more about you and your business and talk about you and your business and talk about some of the challenges that I've solved for other people like you.
Susan Tatum 21:45
This is a great topic, but I want to get on to the other one, because we're going to run out of time. We could have done the whole show on this one, but the other thing that you had a whole chapter on was documenting and following up. And I am following up, and the lack of follow up is one of the things that I run across with my clients and the consultants that I talk to over and over again, and underlying the lack of follow up is often the lack of documentation. So I'm gonna let you run with that.
Casey Jacox 22:14
Yeah, so most people in business or sales, they look at documenting in their CRM, customer relationship management software, they look at it as like a like an annoyance, or their boss wants to micromanage them, or they want like, oh, I have to document so much time. But it's that's the wrong mindset. The mindset is, I'm gonna document everything I learned about this person. I'm gonna find out where they work, their kids, their family, where they vacation, what's their birthday? What coffee they like? What are their business challenges? And I'm a document, how many dogs they have? Because any of that information you will use to ask questions the next time you connect or because if you don't, then this is your follow ups gonna sound like this? Hey, Susan, it's Casey with ABC, company. I'm just calling to check in see what's changed. I want to check in with you, which is code for wasting your time, but follow up, but if I use the specific things I learned now, my follow up is gonna sound like this. Hey, Susan, it's Casey with ABC, company. We spoke two weeks ago. You told me a follow up on March 11 regarding the Oracle project, or the ABC product. Tell me, is now a good time. And so when I would document it, that led my it led my next steps. I never had to guess. I never had to figure out, oh, when should I call that person? Or shouldn't I call that person? The CRM made me look way smarter than I am, and it made the job easier.
Susan Tatum 23:27
I don't know about you, but I can't remember what I did two weeks ago if you're having a lot of conversations. So if I don't document it, it's gone missed opportunity.
Casey Jacox 23:36
No one can and well, I take that back. Sometimes the sim sales leaders or sales people I work with, they're like, oh, I don't like document. I remember it. I'm like, No one can remember. Listen, I played quarterback in college. I had 125 plays in my wrist band. Now I remember that, but I couldn't remember everything about every single client. So instead, you have a choice, either we can be lazy and complacent, or you can make the choice to be elite or really good at what you do and take the time to document. Because if you don't, I always like to ask pain based questions, so I'd say, So tell me, how would you feel if your competitor took the time to document about that same customer going after and you didn't tell me how that'd make you feel? And it usually causes some pain.
Susan Tatum 24:11
Yeah? Like you feel like, yeah, like you really stepped on it and you shouldn't have. Do you think that you gave an example of a follow up, which would be, you told me to call you in a couple of weeks, and so here I am. I do know that we're supposed to try and have something else scheduled, or something else, like a like, just a touching base thing before we finish the conversation that we're in. What if it's just like, I haven't heard of this guy, this person's ghosting me, or I need to, if you're nurturing somebody that's further along, what are other types of follow ups?
Casey Jacox 24:44
So usually, when I follow up people, I'll say, All right, let's say you say Hey Casey, hey now. Great meeting you follow me on April 4. Great Susan, tell me the best way to follow up with you. Send me an email. Great. So if I don't get to be email, tell me what would be the next best way I can try to reach you? Text. Okay, cool. So. If I follow up on email, I follow up on text, I still don't hear from you. Tell me, then should I pretend you've left the United States and you've moved to Antarctica and you never wanna hear from me again? Or is there a different way I should follow up with you? I'm gonna let my personality out, try to like But, and this is gonna take us down a different path, which is probably another conversation I follow a sales process, which some I learned, and now I teach, called medic, which stands for M, E, D, D, i, c, c, your listeners can Google it, but the biggest thing in follow up is someone who's trying to acquire business or someone's selling. You want to win two things. You either want to want to win time, people or revenue. And if you are following up because you think this deal is more important than the prospect, you're wasting your time, the sooner that you give yourself grace, like maybe they don't need this as much as I think. And maybe we say, Hey, Susan, this is Casey, ABC company, I know we met back in February. You told me there was this big thing happening in March. Tell me what's changed, because they haven't heard from you since. So I'm either, I'm assuming something was able to get solved. I'll give you a couple more calls that I'll hear from you, but I want to just follow because I know you said this was important to you, but I'm not going to call them 20 times just to keep calling them and calling them, because that, to me, is not a good use of time. And usually when deals get stuck, it's due to poor discovery. We ask the wrong questions, I find, or that's just not or the relationship you think is just not as strong as it at once maybe appeared to the seller, which sometimes that's another gap,
Susan Tatum 26:15
right? Yeah. Or it's not urgent, and maybe important that urgent things got in the way,
Casey Jacox 26:20
yeah, which goes back questions and listening and like understanding, back to me, this is full like listening, follow up document, putting all in one spot, so then we know what is important to them. And even when I do follow up, one of my favorite questions I like to ask people is, before we get started, tell me what's changed since we last met in February and just shut up. Stare at them.
Susan Tatum 26:37
But I have known big mistakes to be made when that question is not asked, because you could just launch into this whole thing and they're like, Oh, well, we decided to go in a different, whole different direction.
Casey Jacox 26:48
Oh, I'm so glad you said that. That's why I ask that. Describe what would be an ideal outcome for you in the time we have today? Question, I'm not there for me. I'm not there for me. I mean, eventually I'm there for me, but I'm more there for you, and if I can make you feel like the most important person role, because I genuinely believe what I do. Believe what I do matters, and I genuinely care about what I solve the problems I solve, it's going to create a much more chance for having a stronger relationship versus me, hoping that you pick me and hoping you choose me. And it just that's not something I want to be doing.
Susan Tatum 27:14
One last one last question here, because I'm curious in your answer, one of the things that independent consultants struggle with, and you may know this, it is balancing business development with supporting their clients, and the time that it takes to do both. Is it fair to say that using a CRM and using it correctly, and having a process that's defined and in there would reduce the amount of actual time you spend on business development, or at least let you spend that time better.
Casey Jacox 27:44
Couldn't agree more. Yep, could not agree more. A lot of times, people who don't, who aren't good at business development, or they love telling them themselves, they love you to be the victim of their own story, or they'll say things like, I don't have time for that. I just don't have time to prospect. And then my sarcastic question is, well, we all get 1440 minutes. How come you don't have time? Because we all because we all get the same amount. And I'll stare at Immokalee, and they'll be like, what? I go, Yeah, you get 1440 I get 1440 you just choose to do use different your time. You chose to watch the Kardashians and a couple other shows and read 50 Shades of Gray. I chose to do business development and chose to, instead of that one hour, I'm gonna be on Facebook. Maybe I'm gonna spend that one hour, you know, going through my activities, my CRM that I said, and going through time blocking my calendar. And that time block every, maybe every Thursday between 10 and 1130 regardless what I have going on, that is business development time and constantly, just make it a priority. Maybe there's clients I work with. Before I let them go, I'll say, God, it's great to see you again. Hey, before I let you go, tell me. Is there anybody else that comes? Else that comes to mind top of mind for inside your organization that I should based on the services you received from me that I might want to introduce myself to that's not selling
Susan Tatum 28:51
referrals? Yeah,
Casey Jacox 28:52
It's a TED based question. They've already told you, you've done a good job. Why wouldn't you ask them? And if they like you, they're going to refer you so
Susan Tatum 28:59
well, I can tell by the look on your face that you really enjoy it. And I think that's part of because I enjoy having these conversations, that's part of having to get over that mental block. And I try to say you're not, don't think of it as selling. You're helping solve a problem from the get go for these folks,
Casey Jacox 29:15
yeah, selling is if I try to convince somebody to do something they don't want to do, they're going to resist me. but if I ask great questions of value, because I know I can help them, they just, they might not just see it yet. And if you truly, genuinely believe it, that is called Value Based selling and one side, because I actually pushed back to the person who trained me on this eventually, I said, I just don't want to manipulate people. And that's when he challenged me right back. He says, Do you believe what you do matters? Yeah, I do. And if someone does not need sales coaching, or someone does not need a speaker at their event. I'm not going to convince them. They need to convince themselves. The best sellers, the best business development, people, client acquisition, they're curious storytellers.
Susan Tatum 29:50
That is very true, very true. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. I know your heater is out and you practically have ice cubes in your house.
Casey Jacox 30:00
Yeah, sure, yeah. I It's like negative 22 we've have anticipated four inches of snow in our house, hoping the furnace guy will be here soon to fix it.
Susan Tatum 30:07
I hope so too. But thank you so much. And for the listeners that want to follow up with you, I assume that's okay,
Casey Jacox 30:12
please. Yeah, I love connecting people with people.
Susan Tatum 30:15
What's the best way to do that?
Casey Jacox 30:16
I'd say the best way. I'm very active on LinkedIn, just Casey Jacox, j, A, C, O, X, they if you want to learn more about my podcast or the book or speaking or coaching I do, you can just go to my website, which is Caseyjacox.com and if you do connect with me on LinkedIn, please take the extra 10 seconds and the note and write a note and saying, Hey, I'd love to connect you because I heard about you on Susan's podcast. Then we know that actually you listened and you're actually taken to heart what we taught you today. Don't just be the person that says Connect, because that's what everybody does. Be uncommon the way you like to connect with people.
Susan Tatum 30:46
Yeah, that's the way to do it. Well, once again, thank you very much.
Casey Jacox 30:51
Thanks for having me.
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