13 Real Alternatives to Cold Calling That Build Pipeline
Can’t stomach cold calling? Steal Jeb Blount’s 13 proven alternatives to picking up the phone that build real pipeline and actually work.
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.
Can’t stomach cold calling? Steal Jeb Blount’s 13 proven alternatives to picking up the phone that build real pipeline and actually work.
The right time to hire a fractional sales leader is when your team has outgrown what you can manage on top of running the business. Here are 7 signs that tell you it’s time,
Making just three to five of proactive calls to customers in a five-minute block, breaks the reactive cycle most account managers live in and builds the relationships that drive real, predictable revenue.
Recruiting is a sales leader’s number one job, and the way to find sales candidates is the same way your reps find customers: recruit like you prospect.

Steal this trial close technique and exact scripts to motivate buyers to make decisions and act without making big price concessions.
Referral leads close at three to four times the rate of cold and self-generated leads. Once both reach a real sales conversation, referrals close at roughly 26 percent versus 9 percent for cold and

When should you ask questions on a cold call? Questions come after you’ve earned the right, when you’re gathering information and qualifying, and they lead the conversation only when the prospect contacted you first.
To prospect for new clients, stop making random touches and run a consistent five-step system. Work this system every day and you gain control of your pipeline, along with the peace of mind that
The best way to measure sales productivity is with leading indicators—the KPIs and metrics that predict future revenue and let you fix problems before sales dry up.
A good sales voicemail is short, scripted, and gives the prospect one clear reason to call you back. This guide gives you seven word-for-word sales voicemail scripts that work!
Salespeople fail at cold calling for five common reasons. Fix them and the phone starts producing appointments again.
Email response rates are collapsing because decision maker inboxes are stuffed with automated, AI-written slop. This is exactly why the phone is more powerful today than it was ten years ago.

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

Regardless of why we are leaving a voicemail, it is a tool we frequently use, and there are specific strategies you can employ now to make your messages stand out and be remembered. We

Learn how to build a winning voice mail messaging strategy for multi-touch follow-up sequences that compel prospects to call back.
LinkedIn is still the #1 platform for building pipeline in B2B sales, but the game has changed. Sales and marketing professionals have all come to rely on LinkedIn. It’s been their digital handshake, networking
While your competitors are stuck in voicemail purgatory, a small group of top performers has unlocked a secret pipeline of qualified sales leads. They’ve discovered how to stop chasing and start attracting, all by
Here’s a question that’ll flip your understanding of cultural intelligence in sales upside down: How do you win over a room full of skeptical Spanish teenagers when you’re the obvious American outsider who barely
If you’re only showing up in one place, you’re not showing up at all, which is why top sales reps are making multi-channel prospecting a priority and leveraging LinkedIn to get ahead. “The reality
You know the feeling. You’re mid-pitch, and you watch your prospect’s eyes glaze over—their mind somewhere else entirely. It’s exhausting, demoralizing, and it’s killing your close rate. But what if you didn’t have to
Here’s a question that’ll keep you up at night: What do you do when your emotions are sabotaging your sales performance? That’s the exact challenge posed by Kurt O’Donnell and the sales team from
Ben Hogan, who was arguably the greatest ball striker the game of golf has ever known, taught that if you wanted to improve your swing you should focus on the cause rather than the
Growing up, I was easily the shyest girl in the room. Not just quiet—debilitatingly shy. I was so shy that I wouldn’t even ring the bell to get off the bus. I’d simply ride
“I can’t do that.” How many times have you said those four words when facing a challenging sales situation? It could be picking up the phone to make that intimidating cold call. It could

Working smarter with people entails three key activities: assigning the right number of people, identifying roles and planning compensation strategically. Sure-fire Ways to Work Smarter with People Your sales force is defined by the

Data can do more than tell you facts about your own business. It also can reveal important information about what’s going on with your competitors in the marketplace. How to Be Data Savvy In