Selling Isn’t Life or Death But It Does Require Commitment
As you go about your day today, remember that selling isn’t life or death. However, if you prepare and have commitment, your approach is based on solid core values, and you execute and work
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.
As you go about your day today, remember that selling isn’t life or death. However, if you prepare and have commitment, your approach is based on solid core values, and you execute and work
Several years ago, I read a fascinating article about a body language experiment that was conduced by a group of marketing students attending a major university. The experiment was designed to measure the impact,
Call me a referral snob if you will, but if we’re going to ask for referrals, spend precious time following up on them, and then work them with due diligence, don’t we deserve
Some people love meetings and others dread them. Despite having the reputation as sleep enhancers, meetings are actually an opportunity for you to network with management, fellow employees, clients and vendors. You may be
Attending meetings is a lot like going to class. Where you sit in class can affect your grade, and where you sit in a meeting can affect your career. Business meetings are opportunities for
Keep your emotions in check. Road rage is on the rise. While it ought to be avoided simply on the basis of safety, a display of temper behind the wheel could also cost you
Get ready by being clear on your message. Know what it is you want to say. Have three to five points to make regardless of what you are asked. Learn by watching politicians. They
Ask yourself: Ever had a prospective client request a discount, postpone an order, or worse, cancel purchasing from you or your salespeople? Well then it’s a good bet they don’t understand your offerings true
One of my rules for Champion sales people is that nobody buys anything unless there’s a gap between where they are and where they want to be. To effectively sell value, sales people need
In today’s fast- paced business world where too many people claim that they don’t have time to be nice, it’s easy to overlook the details that can help you grow your business, increase your
Now, for those of you who are wondering how one goes about becoming a motivational speaker, it’s pretty much the same as developing any other business. You need to develop your product and brand,
The point is that most people spend time worrying about not hitting their goal and concentrate a lot of time thinking about the things that could go wrong, while Top Performers in any industry
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
In the latest episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, we had the privilege of diving deep into the world of prospecting and sales with Kristin Andree from the Andree Group. Hosted by Sales Gravy
Prospecting is Why Top Sales Professionals Earn the Big Bucks If you want to sell more and exceed your quota consistently adopt these 3 keys to increasing your sales pipeline with prospecting. Rainmakers are
Get Inside Your Prospect’s Head No one likes to have their day interrupted with a call from a salesperson. But it’s demoralizing to make dial after dial, just to have every prospect hang up
Quick Summary In this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount talks to renowned sales experts Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz about their “Go For No” approach to embracing rejection in sales. They
You Need To Close A Sale… And FAST Allowing your sales pipeline to go dry can jeopardize your income and force you into a reactive, stressful state of mind. But if you find yourself
Negotiating Mistakes That Could Kill Your Deal Most salespeople are required to negotiate with their prospects and customers. But let’s face it, today’s consumer and corporate buyer is much more aggressive when negotiating the
Curiosity Is Your Key To Effective Cold Calling On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Ulysses Price, filling in for Jeb Blount, interviews Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell. ConnectAndSell is a software service
When They Say No: Overcoming Rejection And Shifting Your Mindset Introduces Andrea and Richard’s new book, When They Say No, and provides valuable insights on overcoming rejection in sales. The fear of rejection has evolutionary
You know AI is transforming sales, everyone’s talking about it, but you’re still staring at ChatGPT like it’s some mysterious black box, wondering what magical question you should type in first. That’s the reality
The OutBound Sales Training & Leadership Conference presented by Sales Gravy returns Nov. 9-12, 2026, at the spectacular Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa in Las Vegas. If you’re serious about your sales career
LinkedIn is still the #1 platform for building pipeline in B2B sales, but the game has changed. Sales and marketing professionals have all come to rely on LinkedIn. It’s been their digital handshake, networking
While your competitors are stuck in voicemail purgatory, a small group of top performers has unlocked a secret pipeline of qualified sales leads. They’ve discovered how to stop chasing and start attracting, all by
Here’s a question that’ll flip your understanding of cultural intelligence in sales upside down: How do you win over a room full of skeptical Spanish teenagers when you’re the obvious American outsider who barely
If you’re only showing up in one place, you’re not showing up at all, which is why top sales reps are making multi-channel prospecting a priority and leveraging LinkedIn to get ahead. “The reality
You know the feeling. You’re mid-pitch, and you watch your prospect’s eyes glaze over—their mind somewhere else entirely. It’s exhausting, demoralizing, and it’s killing your close rate. But what if you didn’t have to
Here’s a question that’ll keep you up at night: What do you do when your emotions are sabotaging your sales performance? That’s the exact challenge posed by Kurt O’Donnell and the sales team from
Ben Hogan, who was arguably the greatest ball striker the game of golf has ever known, taught that if you wanted to improve your swing you should focus on the cause rather than the
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.