
3 Steps to Dealing with Knee Jerk Objections
Knee jerk objections occur for two reasons. First, you are an interruption. The prospect wasn’t expecting your call and you’re taking him away from the task at hand. Second, the prospect is worried about
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.

Knee jerk objections occur for two reasons. First, you are an interruption. The prospect wasn’t expecting your call and you’re taking him away from the task at hand. Second, the prospect is worried about

It starts with recruiting the right agents. One needs to recruit people who have the skills, attitude, and business-owner mindset necessary to succeed. Finding, attracting and selecting the right prospective candidates is an art

It’s tempting to select someone who’s “hungry”. It would seem logical that a candidate who is anxious for an opportunity would be the perfect person. They’d work hard, be conscientious, and push through any

If you have to make cold calls as part of your sales process – either to set appointments or to find potential clients to sell your products and services to – then you know

Someone wrote me once about a prospect who wasn’t calling him back only to find out the prospect was leaving the company. He wrote me and said, “I guess intuitively I knew he wasn’t

I once read that there are two types of people. People who are willing to wait for a reward and those who want the reward now even though the payoff may be higher if

Selling in these challenging times demands determination and personal fortitude. Having the will to persevere when times are tough is a characteristic commonly found among self-made millionaires. Are you a quitter? The last time

What typically happens when we interact with others is that we size up what’s happening in a conversation from our perspective. We make judgments and evaluations of the other person based on what

Ask direct, specific questions that require your prospect to either commit to what’s next, or that get your prospect to reveal that the sale might not go through (I know you hate to hear

Years ago I heard the story of a 70-year-old woman who lifted a car off her grandchild and saved his life. When she was interviewed, instead of being ecstatic, she was melancholy and admitted

Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that reads, “Make me feel important.” This was the life philosophy of Mary Kay Ash, the well-known cosmetics mogul.

Whether in a face-to-face meeting or over the phone, the salesperson must take the time to engage the customer early on. The key with the early questions is to not blatantly ask, “What other

Are you ready to stop playing “supermarket roulette” with your prospects? Wouldn’t it make you feel accomplished at least knowing regardless of the outcome, that you did everything on your end to move the

On this Sales Gravy Quick Tip, Jeb Blount reveals the real secret to superstar sales success. The good news is it’s obvious and within your grasp.

Many so-called “sales experts” are quick to tell you that they have the one path to prospecting salvation or the top secret for making sales prospecting easy. Run away from these charlatans as fast

Opening, rather than closing, is the most important phase of selling because it’s binary. It’s akin to doing science without Newton’s first law or acknowledging gravity. It’s like trying to be a fighter but

What I love about Jeb is his charismatic ability to weave personal stories from his time in the trenches into his material. He has a great sense of humor, no nonsense approach and always

Sales Gravy CEO Jeb Blount joins Tim Martin on this episode of the Success Is Voluntary podcast to discuss two of Jeb’s bestsellers: Fanatical Prospecting, and his most recent release, Objections. From establishing micro-commitments, to

There are two types of sellers – Rain Barrels and Rain Makers. One waits for leads to show up, the other gets after it and makes it rain. On this podcast episode, Jeb Blount,
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with prospecting. Where do you even start? In this short video, Jason Eatmon, who is a Sales Gravy master trainer and author of BOSS, teaches you how to take

The Four Types of Sales Objections Jeb Blount explores strategies and techniques for effectively skipping past the 4 types of sales objections. On this episode, I have a conversation with Chris McDonough. He’s a
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,

Are you struggling with employee discipline in your office? People challenges occur most often because there is a lack of structure and understanding of the company goals. How many times do you hear something

If you truly want to do more with the same amount of time each and every day, then begin by developing those self-leadership skills necessary for personal success. Can we agree that: A minute

These 8 keys can help you unlock your sales training and development programs so that you get “the most bang for your buck”. Sales training will be one of the few training and development

Part of the reason so many small business owners are crazy busy is because they are not 100 percent forward-thinking leaders. “We don’t have a budget as much as we need to take this

How frequently in business do we continue to ride dead horses? From ineffective marketing to misaligned operational systems to poor management, all continue to exist even though they are, simply speaking, dead horses. Years

Often, when a sales rep knows the right way to ask for the sale, they’ll be more inclined to do so! This common error costs more sales than most sales leaders are willing to

Sales managers are all around us; those in the selling game have likely encountered multiple. Like salespeople themselves, they have a wide range of qualifications, personality traits and work ethics, but the role of

Early right actions make it easier to accomplish future critical milestones and prepare the team for unforeseen issues that arise later. Do you sometimes wonder how they do it? You know who I mean

Just as there is a set of best ways to paint a room, so there are sets of best ways to ask a question, seek an appointment, build rapport, make a presentation, close the