When to Hire a Fractional Sales Leader: 7 Signs Your Company Is Ready
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,
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.
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.
Cold call emails work when they sound human. Steal these 3 examples and closing lines that increase response rates and get prospects on the phone.
Rejection points you in the right direction. It toughens you up and makes you stronger. It tells you when you are on to something big!
The Social Proof Heuristic is a powerful way to minimize fear. On this podcast, you’ll learn how to leverage it to make it easy for your buyer to move forward.
On this podcast episode Jeb Blount answers the number one question we get about prospecting and gives you the secret to timing your telephone prospecting calls.
One of your goals going into any sale is to deal with the potential of inaction. Risk is a big factor in sales, and there are many ways to manage, mitigate and maneuver risk.
On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Kendra Lee and Jeb Blount discuss cold email prospecting techniques. Kendra Lee is the author of The Sales Magnet and one of the top experts on
Talking comes easily for most sales reps, but getting others to listen is a bigger challenge— and a critical element to your long-term success. Many sales reps have convinced themselves (and try to convince
Want to break through the noise and get your prospect’s attention? Want to stand out? Integrate video into your sales process. Video is a powerful medium that may be integrated throughout the entire sales
The bottom line is that you really never know when you might be able to reach a given prospect so it’s always worth trying. Many times high-level decision-makers or business owners are in early
There is no reason—other than laziness—to ever place a “cold” call. Cold calling. Just hearing the words causes chest-tightening, loss-of-breath anxiety for many. And it’s dumb. I suggest you never place another one. In
Successful salespeople craft a sales strategy and then periodically pause and reassess – modifying as need be. Recently I was talking with a sales manager who shared an interesting story about sales strategy reviews.
What one reads is different than the words written. Quite often the message we wish to send people isn’t actually the message that is received. What was meant to come across as good sometimes
All companies want to thrive. No company just wants to just “exist”. It’s “business nature” to want to grow, to become better…..to thrive. We wrote about Rising channels (see the previous blog) and discussed
This year, the company I had been using for the last several years was unresponsive when I tried to schedule service. Coincidentally, I received an email from one of their competitors offering the same
Why do sales professionals who become aware of their sales approach not working continue to plunge ahead? An unfounded “expectation of success” appears to play a significant role in such cases. Recently, I finished
Simplicity equates to clarity.Simple will always beat out complicated. Have you ever researched a new purchase only to find that there are too many options? What did you do? Sometimes people delay the purchase
Baseball players and sales professionals don’t have much in common. However, Elite athletes and Ultra-High Performing sales professionals know their numbers because that’s where the MONEY is. In this video, Jeb Blount addresses the
Salespeople sometimes treat LinkedIn like just another cold prospecting tool, and they end up engaging their prospects in a pretty abrasive way. A few weeks ago, I received a LinkedIn message from a user
Ah, the life of a salesperson. Perpetually condemned to sleazeball status, pushing unneeded or unwanted services on prospects who have no interest in those wares, only to run off into the sunset with briefcases
Here’s a question about sales territory disputes that’ll make your head spin: What do you do when overlapping territories and shared relationships turn your sales team into a collection of lone wolves fighting over
In 1960, two brothers scraped together $900 and bought a failing pizzeria in Michigan, launching what would become a cautionary tale about sales incentive programs gone wrong. Within months, one brother traded his half
The transition from closer to coach is where most new sales leaders struggle. You’ve put in the work, made the calls, and closed the deals. Your numbers speak for themselves. You were the rainmaker.
Here’s a question that’ll drive you absolutely crazy: How do you sell professional services without giving away everything for free? That’s the burning question from Laura and Adam, attorneys who are struggling with the
Gaius, who runs an insurance brokerage in Ohio wants to know how to get his new sales agents cold calling and building pipeline earlier in their training cycle, without making them feel overwhelmed and
Sales Leadership is a continuous journey of self-awareness, connection, and growth. By cultivating courage, emotional intelligence, and authenticity, leaders can navigate challenges effectively and inspire their teams to reach new heights. Through active listening,
Eric in Lewiston, Maine, asks how to use last year’s data to create and accurate sales plans and evaluate software tools (like CRMs and ZoomInfo) to make those goals happen. Sales planning is vital—without
In this episode of The Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount sits down with Andy Matheou from RHM Staffing to dive deep into the challenges and triumphs of selling in the staffing industry. Andy shares
On this episode of The Sales Gravy Podcast, Lucy Beth Adams sits down with Master Sales Trainer, Jessica Stokes to discuss her journey in sales, from her early days in cold calling to becoming