
Don’t Send Your Prospects Into Fight-or-Flight Mode
Pay attention and adapt your style to that of your prospect and customer. I work with great salespeople and the most successful know how to connect with a variety of buyers. Salespeople are taught
Welcome to the Sales Gravy blog, where salespeople and sales leaders get better every week. We publish new sales training articles and podcast episodes three times a week, covering prospecting, cold calling, objections, negotiation, and leadership, written by Jeb Blount and the Sales Gravy trainer team.

Pay attention and adapt your style to that of your prospect and customer. I work with great salespeople and the most successful know how to connect with a variety of buyers. Salespeople are taught

When you’re in combat or arguing with a client, you are automatically pushing them away, regardless if you’re right. When you’re in conversation, the buyer is staying engaged with you. Are your client and prospect conversations often

Characteristics of a resilient, sustainable business include leadership that understands the difference between working “for” and working “with” their employees. Consider these glum facts: Only one in eight workers worldwide are engaged at work,

Making the choice to build a spiral pipeline for your sales starts with engaging three core activities in your organization. And continuing these three core activities every day. Don’t Settle for Living in a

Stop thinking your job is done when the contract is signed. Stay on the ground. Remain active even after the deal is closed. Redefine Closing the Sale It’s time to reframe how we think

Make sure your testimonials are “impact” testimonials. Distrust in sales and marketing messages has skyrocketed over recent years. Not surprising when you see some of the ridiculous unsubstantiated claims made in e-mails. Buyers may

Salespeople and sales managers are caught up in their own version of Ground Hog Day. They keep using the same approach, having the same conversations, which are leading to the same outcomes. Sales Ground

In order to strike a balance between no theme and full-on theme park, it’s important to understand how to choose a theme that’s right for your presentation and your audience. A group of flight

Some of us aren’t even aware that we talk negatively to ourselves. Take some time today to think about what you say to yourself. If you find yourself doing this, it is time to

To create true sales predictability (and avoid Sales Whiplash), it’s critical to consider both independently, and to have your pipeline numbers influence your forecast output. Drastically Refine Your Sales Pipeline This Year Understanding that

As you work to make sales, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you know what your clients want and need. However, it’s likely that you have overlooked some of your clients’

The Warm and Fuzzy Value Proposition People love the term value proposition, so user friendly, none threatening, cute, warm, and safe You are no longer relying on Palm Pilot, going to Blockbuster for your

Building Relationships On Sales Calls Building a relationship with someone you can’t see can be difficult, but simply changing the way you talk can make a big impact. Here’s six tips for using the

Cold Calling is Alive and Well With New Rules Cold calling is one of the most targeted, efficient and effective ways to reach potential customers but there are new rules for cold calling in

Successful salespeople know that small cumulative steps, done every day, bring the most impactful results. The good news is, all it takes is one more call. The grand majority of gimmicky sales advice is

On this Sales Gravy Podcast episode Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Anthony Iannarino (Eat Their Lunch) get down and dirty about why salespeople need to adopt a phone first approach to outbound prospecting sequences.

If You Never Leave a Voicemail on Prospecting Calls, You Will Never Get a Call Back. Prospecting is rarely one and done. It takes multiple touches to get prospects to engage. Therefore, leaving voicemail

How to Bounce Back After Getting Rejected on Prospecting Calls It’s a fact of life in sales. You are going to get rejected on prospecting calls. How you bounce back after getting rejected is

On This Podcast Jeb Blount Discusses Fanatical Prospecting for Real Estate Agents Estate Agents Podcast hosts Stephen Brown and Andrew Overman discuss the value of prospecting activity for real estate agents with Fanatical

The key to opening cold calls is crafting messaging that compels prospects to engage in meaningful conversations. In the 10 years that my book, Smart Calling™ has been out, it has helped prevent countless

Get Familiar with Webcam Technology We really have only two choices: we can whine about how uncomfortable webcams make us, or we can embrace the technology and use it for our benefit. Our ever-increasing
Short Answer What is priming in sales? Priming in sales is exposing your buyer to specific words, images, stories, and questions that shape their emotional state before you ask for the sale. Buyers who

Steal this trial close technique and exact scripts to motivate buyers to make decisions and act without making big price concessions.
Salespeople fail at cold calling for five common reasons. Fix them and the phone starts producing appointments again.
Most salespeople are looking for the secret edge that will move them to the top of the sales ranking report. The truth though is that there isn’t just one thing that separates top performing
Short Answer How honest should you be in sales? Completely. The moment a customer catches you in even a small lie, like fudging how long a meeting will run, they have every reason to
The best pitch I’ve ever heard about didn’t have a single slide. It had an ax, an elevator, and a crowd that had no idea what was about to happen. The sales storytelling techniques
Sales complacency is the silent performance killer that sets in after winning — and the only defense is returning to the fundamentals that built your success in the first place. Key Takeaways When Success

Quick Summary Reading buyer signals means recognizing the behavioral and psychological cues prospects send before they ghost you, and using that information to keep deals moving toward a real decision. Key Takeaways Listen to
When results drop and motivation fades, the fix is to increase your prospecting activity above your normal baseline, not wait until you feel ready. More calls create more conversations, more conversations create more opportunities,

So, what separates the great channels from the “not-so-great”? Great channel organizations truly focus on what really matters. By doing so, these companies and their people are able to accelerate revenues, increase market share,

Your management team may have implemented a team selling model with great expectations for success. However, team selling doesn’t always live up to its potential. To Team Or Not To Team? Does this sound

Tips for Building a Successful Process for Onboarding New Salespeople To build and sustain a high-performing sales team you must begin with successfully onboarding new salespeople. Getting it right from the start will help

It’s often difficult to motivate sales reps to focus on developing expertise when they want to develop relationships, but the two can go hand in hand. Trust is Not Enough For many years, developing

In the context of selling, a blind spot is something you commonly do within your sales interactions that potentially threatens your success. And here comes the kicker… you’re not aware of it. I’m a

Sales is about relationships. Your sales team can boost your company’s image by blogging, contributing to trade publications, and presenting within your marketplace. Use the Sales Team to Uncover Success Stories Success stories are

The question you must ask yourself is: “Does this secrecy make good business sense in today’s marketplace?” How This Joke Hurts the Small Business Bottom Line Small business owners understand that profitability is critical

Many sales managers don’t like having the difficult conversations—who does? But as a leader, it is part of your role. You’re a top sales producer that has been rewarded with a promotion to sales

Sales prospecting can be tedious, intimidating, and terribly discouraging. Yet, it still has to be done. Why not make a game out of it and get past the boredom? You’ve probably heard the saying