The Business Handshake: Types, Meaning, and How to Do It Right
Quick Summary A good handshake is firm but not crushing, palm to palm with the webs of your hands meeting, paired with eye contact and a smile, and lasting about two or three seconds.
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.
Quick Summary A good handshake is firm but not crushing, palm to palm with the webs of your hands meeting, paired with eye contact and a smile, and lasting about two or three seconds.
Quick Summary Your goal in the first few minutes of meeting a prospect or client is simple: make them comfortable enough to trust you and open up. In sales, that first impression decides whether
Quick Summary The most effective way to follow up with a prospect is to make it structured instead of hoping they call you back. Set a specific day and time for the next contact
If you’ve earned a real database through years of cold calling, you stop the eight-hour grind, not the activity itself. You still need a steady trickle of new contacts coming in every week to
Quick Summary A strong sales follow-up call starts before the first call even ends. Lock in a specific date and time, then show up prepared and exactly on time. Open by reminding the prospect
The accounts you feel safest about are the ones you’re most likely to lose. When account managers grow familiar with long-term clients, familiarity quietly hardens into complacenct.
Here is the thing worth remembering. You don’t like being passed from person to person on the phone. Your customers don’t like it any better.
Quick Summary An effective cold calling approach isn’t about a slicker pitch — it’s about earning the right to a conversation. The five elements below are research, asking questions, listening, honesty, and follow-through. Cold
To follow up without being pushy, stop assuming silence means rejection, bring value to every touchpoint, and vary your communication channel until the prospect responds. Key Takeaways: Why Silence Doesn’t Mean No Have you
Jumping in to save a rep’s deal feels like leadership, but it trains your team to call you instead of solving problems themselves. Real sales leadership means coaching the rep, not closing the deal
If you want to know how to scale a sales team, document your sales process and prove your close rate before you add headcount, then decide whether your next hire is a leader or
To prioritize prospects effectively, evaluate every opportunity using three variables: lead temperature, sales cycle timing, and deal size. Together, these factors show which prospects deserve immediate action, which need ongoing nurturing, and which belong in automation. Key Takeaways Why do so
When their KPIs don’t recognize the importance of consistent prospecting follow-up to reach target contacts, you’re not only setting yourself up to lose a potentially good rep, you are also directly impacting your prospecting
Prospecting is the price you have to pay in advance for success in sales and the income you want. -Jeb Blount In this episode of Level Up: From Agent to Entrepreneur podcast, featured sales
Prospecting Machine Jeb Blount and Adam H. Michaels talk sales, prospecting & more! The Lighthouse with Adam H. Michaels · Jeb Blount | The Prospecting Machine From dealing with crazy rejections to what makes a
Salespeople cultivate customers through prospecting and referrals; they convert customers into clients by establishing and maintaining a relationship that allows them to build a sense of trust. Times are tough – but as an
Objections frustrate sales reps to the point of them developing some serious call reluctance. Don’t you wish that you, and your team, had a proven approach that actually works? Every month, I get emails from
Introducing a salesperson to cold-calling is the same as Edison introducing electricity to the world by demonstrating the use of the electric chair. It’s universally known that sales professionals hate cold calling. And, yes,
Instead of wasting time figuring out an impressive response, spend time understanding what caused the objection in the first place. Identify what you are doing, or not doing that triggered the money objection in
As a call screener, my job is to protect the time of the decision maker that I work for – so I need to make sure I’m not passing through calls that are going
What is the real objection to buying your product? The “price is too high” is usually just a smokescreen to some other objection. Ask the right questions and you’ll get the answer. Do they
Prospecting is the price you have to pay in advance for success in sales and the income you want. -Jeb Blount In this episode of Level Up: From Agent to Entrepreneur podcast, featured sales
Prospecting Machine Jeb Blount and Adam H. Michaels talk sales, prospecting & more! The Lighthouse with Adam H. Michaels · Jeb Blount | The Prospecting Machine From dealing with crazy rejections to what makes a
That stumped him. And that’s the whole point. Most sales reps sell just like he does: leading with features and benefits sure that if they just say the right one or ones, in the right
Introducing a salesperson to cold-calling is the same as Edison introducing electricity to the world by demonstrating the use of the electric chair. It’s universally known that sales professionals hate cold calling. And, yes,
Jeb Blount and Anthony Iannarino discuss the biggest mistake salespeople make and how to avoid the stalled deal.
The time and energy you devote to things that are outside of your control is better spent in areas where you have control. We don’t get to choose what happens in the areas where
Instead of wasting time figuring out an impressive response, spend time understanding what caused the objection in the first place. Identify what you are doing, or not doing that triggered the money objection in
I hear all the time from salespeople saying how their prospecting plan doesn’t seem to be delivering the results they need. Everyone needs to continually fine tune their prospecting process. The biggest problem I
How then do we make coaching conversations productive, efficient, and less stressful for the coach and coachee? With a bit of forward thinking and action and these 3 sales coaching hacks: We all know
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.
Most sales team meetings fail because they aren’t actually about selling. Mike Weinberg says the fix is simple: stop running status updates and start running meetings that make your team more aligned, more energized,
Jumping in to save a rep’s deal feels like leadership, but it trains your team to call you instead of solving problems themselves. Real sales leadership means coaching the rep, not closing the deal
If you want to know how to scale a sales team, document your sales process and prove your close rate before you add headcount, then decide whether your next hire is a leader or
Most sales forecasts fail for a reason no CRM can fix. Sellers stop telling their leaders the truth the moment honesty starts costing them something.
Summary The most effective sales compensation strategy for getting a small team focused on high-value complex deals is to layer a significantly higher reward on those deals without reducing incentives on transactional ones. Pair
Summary When the market shifts, your salespeople are not going to figure it out on their own. That’s your job. As a sales leader, your responsibility is to see the change coming, get ahead
Summary: Most sales managers confuse empathy with sympathy and pay for it in team performance. Jeb Blount breaks down the real difference, why listening first is the most powerful coaching move you have, and
Summary: Q1 is feedback, not failure. Top-performing sales teams use a Q1 sales strategy review to assess whether they have an execution problem or a focus problem, then make targeted adjustments heading into Q2.