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There are advantages to an automated system. It saves money in salaries and benefits. It prevents old-fashioned phone tag by allowing people to leave detailed messages in their own voice with clear and correct
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.
There are advantages to an automated system. It saves money in salaries and benefits. It prevents old-fashioned phone tag by allowing people to leave detailed messages in their own voice with clear and correct
Don’t you wish that along with those bizarre directions on how to set up and use your phone—the ones written by the people who designed the phones and therefore already know how to use
Do tattoos and body piercing belong in business? There seems to be an increased number of people with tattoos on their body and a variety of body piercing. Body piercing used to be limited
As a media crisis trainer, Ms. Hoffman advises her client to figure out what their audience will be wearing and to go one step above. The same rule applies in all areas of business.
The same overall rules apply to women’s work attire as apply to men’s. Business clothing is not a reflection of the latest fashion trend. A woman should be noticed for who she is and
If you choose to vary your business attire depending on the day’s schedule, make sure that you are prepared for the unexpected. Have a change of clothes at the office. And remember that it
Many of my clients tell me that their sales team are made up of a bunch of service people or farmers. The challenge in difficult times are that new customers are risk averse to
The key to success during a downturn, aside from surviving, is to further entrench yourself with your existing client base and at the same time look for ways to penetrate and position your product
It is up to us to respect time and give it both meaning and value. If you want to know the value of a year, ask a P.O.W. that has lost his freedom. If
If you were to poll all of your customers as to why they bought from you, they would respond with a variety of reasons. What follows are the most common reasons why people choose
The greatest obstacle in making a purchasing decision is fear. When it comes to selling, you better handle the prospect’s fear or it will handle you. Fear of making the wrong decision. Fear that
One advantage that salespeople posses is this; aside from being a salesperson, you are also a consumer and a prospect, enabling you to better connect with each prospect you speak with. Think about
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.