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.
If you’ve hung around me for longer than five minutes, you’ve heard me say that sales is about talking with people. The fact is, the more people you talk with, the more you’ll sell.
The best salespeople spend hours rehearsing sales calls, because statements, and meeting pitches so they know exactly what to say when they finally get a prospect on the line. The best know that practice,
WARNING: This Monday’s message will be one of the most powerful hacks you’ll ever integrate into your life—because it’s simple, easy to put into practice, and it works. It has the potential, over the
As humans, we naturally fear rejection and do everything possible to avoid it. We’re social creatures at our core, and being rejected feels like we’re being shunned, banished, or kicked out of the group.
Ron wants to know how to get CEOs to actually answer his cold calls (or at least respond). He runs a recruiting firm and finds that his cold calls to top executives often go
I’m hearing sob stories from leaders and individuals everywhere who are waking up to the cold, hard truth that they are staring down the barrel of a thin or empty pipeline. If you are
In this episode of The Sales Gravy Podcast, discover how Alex Niswander used the Fanatical Prospecting framework to maximize outreach and build meaningful client relationships. Learn about creative touchpoints, High-Intensity Prospecting call blocking (HIPs),
Persistence is the Key to Fanatical Prospecting Excellence Other than not prospecting all together, giving up too soon is the primary reason salespeople are failing at prospecting on an epic scale. Three weeks ago,
On this episode of The Sales Gravy Podcast, host Jeb Blount sits down with sales expert Brian Parsley to tackle one of the most common objections faced by sales professionals—price. Brian shares actionable strategies

Making the choice to build a spiral pipeline for your sales starts with engaging three core activities in your organization. And continuing these three core activities every day. Don’t Settle for Living in a

Stop thinking your job is done when the contract is signed. Stay on the ground. Remain active even after the deal is closed. Redefine Closing the Sale It’s time to reframe how we think

Salespeople and sales managers are caught up in their own version of Ground Hog Day. They keep using the same approach, having the same conversations, which are leading to the same outcomes. Sales Ground

In order to strike a balance between no theme and full-on theme park, it’s important to understand how to choose a theme that’s right for your presentation and your audience. A group of flight

To create true sales predictability (and avoid Sales Whiplash), it’s critical to consider both independently, and to have your pipeline numbers influence your forecast output. Drastically Refine Your Sales Pipeline This Year Understanding that

When you are winning deals, it’s easy to slip into a euphoric mindset and completely forget about the process that got you there in the first place. Out of all the sales rules, there
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.