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

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

What you’re trying to do is isolate and uncover what the objection or stall is going to be at the end so you can position yourself to deal with it and advance the sale.

Objections are not deal killers. Sometimes, they are deal enablers, helping the salesperson to understand the buyer’s real needs and requirements. Zig Ziglar was the best-known sales trainer in the world. The man from
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,
On this episode of The Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount Jr. sits down with Dayna Williams to discuss cutting-edge strategies for sales success. She gives expert insights on how to develop a winning sales culture,
Sales objections pose a challenge for salespeople, leading to demoralization. Sales leaders play a crucial role in helping reps develop perseverance.
The article suggests using bingo as a teaching tool to handle objections
On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount sits down with KaTom CEO Patricia Bible to discuss what it takes to lead and sustain a hyper-growth company. Reflecting on her journey with KaTom,
On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, I dive into part two of my conversation with sales leadership expert Mike Weinberg on what new sales managers need to do to get off to
On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, I sit down with Mike Weinberg for Part One of our conversation on the state of the Sales Profession, sales leadership, and getting started as a
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Scale Your Business with Affordable Sales Training Every business owner wants to grow their business, attract more customers, and increase revenue. One of the best ways to achieve these goals is by investing in
Why Leaders Fail— And What To Do About It In a world that demands adaptability and resilience, leaders who prioritize strengths are paving the way for success in the workplace. I recently worked with