Start Speaking the Language of Sales Success
This bad language is a surefire way to annoy your prospect and potentially lose a sale. Watching your language will require effort on your part to ensure you are not using words and phrases
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.
This bad language is a surefire way to annoy your prospect and potentially lose a sale. Watching your language will require effort on your part to ensure you are not using words and phrases
The fact is that the “new economy” has and will continue to squeeze businesses of every size and industry. Sales forces are not immune to the squeezing, either. In some ways, sales people bear
CEOs often have the desire to step in and manage the sales process, but it can be harmful. CEOs need to learn to trust the people they have hired. They should request to be
You might think that unless a CEO is involved in selling, sales coaching is something that is more important for his employees. In my experience, successful sales models only work if the CEO understands
Winning is not guaranteed, but earned. The same thing goes for sales: work like an athlete – overcome like an athlete – win like an athlete. I’m a veteran salesman and a sports fan.
If you are in charge of managing a sales team to reach sales goals, you must ask yourself this critical question: “How effective am I in this role?” A sales coach helps his people
Eliminating these costly assumptions will enable you to make better decisions and prevent the breakdowns in communication that act as a barrier to creating desired results, such as more sales. Once this knowledge gap
Every rep should be on a program as a means of improving their performance. Companies who are truly performance based should be focused on continual improvement from all their sales reps. If a rep
Most company’s management and sales teams are under immediate pressure already to begin accomplishing their new goals and sales targets. In fact, this pressure is also felt in the accounting department, the marketing department,
Which culture does your company have, or do you even know? Having the right kind of culture is vitally important to your success. The Culture of Your Sales Team Several years ago I worked
Would you like a way to become instantly better at closing more sales over the phone? If so, then simply incorporate these “must know” questions into your first qualifying call and you will immediately
The people you do business with deserve to be served by only the best. If that isn’t you, move aside and let the professionals do the job the right way. Caring About the People
Can’t stomach cold calling? Steal Jeb Blount’s 13 proven alternatives to picking up the phone that build real pipeline and actually work.
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
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.
Quick Summary Cold calling anxiety is not a symptom of weakness. It’s human and natural to feel fear when you cold call. You are interrupting a stranger who was not expecting you, and everything
Fear of the phone is quietly draining sales pipelines, and the reps who win are the ones willing to stop hiding behind email and LinkedIn and simply make the call.
Salespeople seek a magic window that makes cold calling easy. When prospects answer happy, say yes without a fight, and book the meeting themselves. So, is there a best time to call?
Short Answer Yes, you can make cold calling fun, and it is worth doing, because the reps who enjoy the phone are the ones who stay on it. Fun is not a personality trait
In this economy, asking whether you need to sell online or in person is like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg. I was keynoting at a conference last week, when a
Here are some of my favorite screw-ups. Those funny stories that I have seen many of my fellow sales professionals make – me included. Ever realize how much you can learn from watching other
If you don’t invest the time and effort in your projects, you will not enjoy exceptional results. Doesn’t your business deserve the most impressive product possible? Have you ever made spaghetti sauce from scratch
In a world that’s getting noisier by the day, the longer you wait to reveal yourself, the likelier it is that you’ll find yourself stuck in the visibility vacuum. For months (or maybe even
To be spectacular is to be different. Do you encourage your employees to be different, to do different? Are you encouraged to be or do different? There is great honor in being the first
Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell, and Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy, discuss the economics of building and running highly productive sales teams. As with virtually every aspect of our world, even the field
If you don’t like to sell, it means that you are doing it wrong. Stepping in with courage and determination into a sales conversation is the most powerful aspect of your business. The biggest
When their KPIs don’t recognize the importance of consistent prospecting follow-up to reach target contacts, you’re not only setting yourself up to lose a potentially good rep, you are also directly impacting your prospecting
The secret to an organized closet is to never bring in anything new unless you first get rid of something old. I recently sent out a survey to my colleagues, asking them to evaluate
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.