Episode 148

full
Published on:

1st Oct 2025

Human Connection in Customer Success and Sales - Jared Cook, Founder, Crush Churn

Summary:

Today I speak to Jared Cook, a seasoned expert in customer success and sales. Jared has most recently been a SR VP of Customer Experience at Docebo and has held senior roles in Customer Success at companies like Domo and Adobe. He is the founder of Crush Churn Consulting where he helps companies reduce churn by 30%.

Our conversation explores the importance of human connection in sales, the role of customer success in driving retention, and the need for genuine relationships with customers.

Jared shares insights from his childhood about sales, emphasizing the importance of confidence, connecting on a human level as a leader, and a seller, and understanding customer needs.

There are so many useful approaches that Jared shares on having difficult interactions with clients to creating a personal connection with a new team that you can take into what you do.

If you want practical strategies for improving customer retention and preventing churn, and implementing curiosity and empathy in your sales interactions. You'll walk aways with foundational skills to integrate your personal and professional lives to foster deeper connections with the people your work with and the clients you serve. This was a fun one to learn from an executive is customer success and how those skills can help you in sales!

Sound Bytes:

"It's about helping a human solve a problem."

"You can create human connection at scale."

"I'm always up for an adventure."

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction to Human Connection in Sales

02:41 Defining Selling by Being Human

05:01 Lessons from Childhood: Sales and Confidence

10:47 Integrating Personal and Professional Life

17:24 The Role of Customer Success in Sales

21:28 Curiosity as a Sales Tool

28:09 Improving Customer Retention Strategies

33:18 Identifying and Preventing Customer Churn

39:36 Building Genuine Connections with Customers

Connect with Jared

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About the Podcast

Sell By Being Human
On the Sell By Being Human podcast, award-winning sales professional Alex Smith provides the proven way to harness your innate human skills like empathy, curiosity, and kindness to learn how to sell and navigate the sales journey.
This is where human connection and sales meet. You may be someone whose success depends on influence, negotiation, and your ability to create change, but you may reject aggressive sales tactics. Maybe you feel stuck in corporate "autopilot," knowing your best asset is your genuine personality, but you struggle to use it to get what you want. Then this channel is for you.

It will teach you how to close the gap between wanting to be ethical and feeling pressured to sell aggressively. You’ll also learn actionable strategies for translating emotional intelligence into high-trust results. Join Alex and top guests, including NY Times bestsellers, keynote speakers, and global founders, as they prove that being truly human is the ultimate sales advantage.

About your host

Profile picture for Alex Smith

Alex Smith

Alex Smith is a seasoned sales professional and podcast host who champions a human-first approach to selling. With nearly two decades of experience, he explores how empathy, curiosity, and genuine connection drive influence in everyday life. Through his podcast, he highlights stories from people across all professions, showing that anyone can persuade and create impact simply by being human.