How to Negotiate in Sales: 7 Rules That Win the Deal
No matter your industry or deal size, mastering how to negotiate in sales comes down to seven rules that protect your leverage and win more profitable deals.
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.
No matter your industry or deal size, mastering how to negotiate in sales comes down to seven rules that protect your leverage and win more profitable deals.
Summary A LinkedIn social selling strategy works when sellers show up with authenticity, not automation. The biggest mistake sellers make today is using AI to generate posts and messages in bulk, then publishing without
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
Time management is a myth. Time is fixed and unrecoverable — what salespeople can manage is how they choose to spend it. Every sales day presents three types of activities: trivial, important, and impactful.
Summary The easiest way to spot a fake sales guru on LinkedIn is to ask one question: are they selling you something before they’ve proven anything? Fake gurus manufacture credibility through aesthetics and urgency.
Summary How do you know what sales advice to trust? Look at who’s giving it. Credible sales advice comes from people who are actively selling today, have a verifiable track record across years and

Under-slept reps make more mistakes, take longer to respond, remember less, and read prospects worse, all of which show up in fewer calls made and fewer deals closed.
Summary The four principles of effective sales conversations are: (1) people respond in kind, meaning emotions are contagious and you set the tone; (2) people communicate in stories, and the clues to their real
Most salespeople are wired for now. The quota is now. The pipeline review is now. The pressure to close is always right now. And that urgency is exactly what gets in the way when
Summary How do you get your first customers when you have no sales experience and no reputation? Target people who have not committed to a competitor yet. Define a tight ideal customer profile, qualify
Summary Sales reps who sprint through their prospecting activity burn out fast and end up with empty pipelines by mid-quarter. The fix is not working harder out of the gate. It is building a
I was about two years into my sales career when I took a deal I had no business taking. A local business owner was expanding fast, opening new locations all over town, and I
Jeb Blount, Jeffery Gitomer, and Jen Gluckow offer tips, tricks, and techniques for getting past sales objections on this episode of Sell Or Die podcast. Jeb Blount, Jeffery Gitomer, and Jen Gluckow discuss actionable
On this short, high impact video, Jeb Blount and Jeffrey Gitomer battle it out over sales objections.
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,

What you want to do is offer value in your visit or demo, and then leave it up to your prospect to decide if it’s worth taking your call or visit any further after
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,

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

Sales is a process, especially when it comes to consultative selling and the process only works when you don’t skip steps. Staying in touch with prospects, following up in a timely and mindful manner
On this podcast, Jeb Blount, Founder and CEO of Sales Gravy, discusses his bestselling book Fanatical Prospecting with Gina Lynch. Gina and Jeb focus on what start-up founders and entrepreneurs must do to accelerate

The fourth quarter is prime time for sales teams. Manage Q4 well and you’ll make your number and more. Manage it poorly and you’ll pay for your mistake well into the new year. There

The problem is that most managers and other figures of authority — Directors, V.P.’s, and even Business Owners — have never been taught how to properly exercise authority and command respect as leaders. Sales
The Question Every Sales Leaders Must Asnwer Do your people understand what they are accountable for? Most people will answer, “yes,” yet most of the time people make mistakes or fail to meet expectations

Great managers lead by example. They start off each day by making sure everybody is ready to do business. They start with a daily meeting making sure that they have a positive attitude, set

Your team wants to feel the energy and belief, as a Sales Leader work on this emotional transfer. Being a leader and having vision and communicating emotional is a Critical Success Factor in Sales

First of all, I don’t enjoy gambling; and second, I really don’t know how to read a horse racing program. When it comes to betting on a horse race, I tend to look at