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
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

Don’t confuse your sales role with role-playing. Role-playing sends most sellers running for the nearest exit. Everything Terry was taught about sales reinforced the idea that he had to be, “larger than life,” or

It’s when we humble ourselves and admit we could do better and continue to push our activities, efforts, and risk for being humbled that we find the greatness we can really achieve. I cringed

Want to build rapport quickly and get people to like you more? Notice, and bring up similarities. You can easily find out some useful info on a person’s LinkedIn profile or company bio if it’s

What’s wrong with focusing on your sales process first and your sales philosophy second, or just ignoring the whole thing? It’s all about the results you want vs. the results you will get. Have

Poor time management is the biggest challenge for new sellers. Your most finite resource as a sales professional is time. In our business we work with salespeople and sales managers of all levels. Recently,

Closing the sale involves being able to diffuse and deflect (and often anticipate) customer objections. Closing the Sale Like putting the finishing touches on a masterpiece work of art – closing is the apex

Your challenge is that you can’t use a positive sales approach with a negative person. Are you too positive? If you’re like most salespeople—and most salespeople are—you’re pretty positive. The same is true if

How do you view yourself as a salesperson? What would happen if you changed that perspective? Sales still slumping along and not where you want them to be? Maybe you need to change your

Billions of dollars are spent every year on carefully crafted impressions by businesses anxious to carve out a valuable position in the minds of their customers. Alas, if only the same thing could be said
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.