3 Steps to Dealing with Knee Jerk Objections
Knee jerk objections occur for two reasons. First, you are an interruption. The prospect wasn’t expecting your call and you’re taking him away from the task at hand. Second, the prospect is worried about
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.
Knee jerk objections occur for two reasons. First, you are an interruption. The prospect wasn’t expecting your call and you’re taking him away from the task at hand. Second, the prospect is worried about
It starts with recruiting the right agents. One needs to recruit people who have the skills, attitude, and business-owner mindset necessary to succeed. Finding, attracting and selecting the right prospective candidates is an art
It’s tempting to select someone who’s “hungry”. It would seem logical that a candidate who is anxious for an opportunity would be the perfect person. They’d work hard, be conscientious, and push through any
If you have to make cold calls as part of your sales process – either to set appointments or to find potential clients to sell your products and services to – then you know
Someone wrote me once about a prospect who wasn’t calling him back only to find out the prospect was leaving the company. He wrote me and said, “I guess intuitively I knew he wasn’t
I once read that there are two types of people. People who are willing to wait for a reward and those who want the reward now even though the payoff may be higher if
Selling in these challenging times demands determination and personal fortitude. Having the will to persevere when times are tough is a characteristic commonly found among self-made millionaires. Are you a quitter? The last time
What typically happens when we interact with others is that we size up what’s happening in a conversation from our perspective. We make judgments and evaluations of the other person based on what
Ask direct, specific questions that require your prospect to either commit to what’s next, or that get your prospect to reveal that the sale might not go through (I know you hate to hear
Years ago I heard the story of a 70-year-old woman who lifted a car off her grandchild and saved his life. When she was interviewed, instead of being ecstatic, she was melancholy and admitted
Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that reads, “Make me feel important.” This was the life philosophy of Mary Kay Ash, the well-known cosmetics mogul.
Whether in a face-to-face meeting or over the phone, the salesperson must take the time to engage the customer early on. The key with the early questions is to not blatantly ask, “What other
How To Open A Prospecting Call Besides being very busy, your prospects probably get a lot of sales calls every week, and many of them from your direct competition. So why would they want
Email or Telephone: Which one do you use more for prospecting? The question should not be the number of people you can contact. The question we need to be asking is, “What is the
Cold Calling C-Level Executives When calling into the upper “C” suites, assess their mood and circumstances at the time of the call quickly and match it with your tone and conversation. This will give
Build Relationships With Gatekeepers Tricks or tactics to “bypass the gatekeeper” may get you some surprise face time, but it’s often at the expense of the deal. Winning over a gatekeeper can often be
Your Prospect Is Stalling. Now What? Top producers know a weak prospect when they hear one, and they would much rather know ahead of time who is leading them on and not likely to
Why You Should Start Reversing Objections Reversing objections is counter-intuitive, highly effective, and requires superior preparation and courage. You must consider the response that requires the most confidence, preparation, quick-thinking, understanding, and sales talent.
How To Sound Natural Over The Phone If you sell for a living, sooner or later you have to pick up the phone for prospecting, follow up, and sales calls. To be effective, you
The Dreaded “I Am Not Interested” Objection Nothing, absolutely nothing, cuts a conversation with a prospect shorter than a brusque, “I am not interested.” Knowing how to respond to this objection can make selling
On cold calls, to grab attention your message and approach needs to be relevant. There are 5 questions to answer before you make that cold call that will help you develop a message that
The year was 1938. Families across America gathered, listening during the golden age of radio. On the eve of Halloween, a broadcast interrupted their evening: A live report claimed Martian cylinders had landed in
Here’s a question that’ll keep you up at night: How do you take a company from $300K in annual revenue to $1.5 million in 18 months, then scale to $3-$5 million within five years?
Every week, someone asks me: “Jeb, do I need Sales Navigator to prospect on LinkedIn?”My answer: No. But you do need a system. LinkedIn is the most powerful prospecting platform on earth. It’s a
You’ve probably heard it a hundred times lately—AI is coming for your job. Every week, there’s a new headline about another role being automated, another company replacing people with bots, another “AI agent” that
The buzz around “social selling” is deafening. Every guru, every pundit, every platform is screaming about its power. And yet, most salespeople are failing at it. Miserably. They log into LinkedIn. They dabble with
The gap between average salespeople and elite performers lies in process. While most reps chase quick wins and hope something sticks, top producers follow proven sales strategies that consistently deliver results. They’ve mastered the
Most salespeople are busy. Few are productive. They chase. They pitch. They get ignored. And the cycle repeats. Why? Because they’re committing one of the worst offenses in modern sales: They’re treating LinkedIn like
You’re on LinkedIn, but do you really know how to use it effectively? There’s no good reason to avoid mastering LinkedIn. Your prospects are on LinkedIn actively engaging, researching, and making decisions. LinkedIn is
Every day, your prospects are assaulted by a digital firehose of generic, AI-generated emails and connection requests. It’s an incessant barrage of noise, and as a survival mechanism, your buyers have learned to ignore
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.