Winning in Sales with a Dinner Table MBA
It isn’t everyone who can say they got an education in sales at the dinner table, but for my brother and I, that’s exactly where our education—and our love of sales—began. My father was
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.
It isn’t everyone who can say they got an education in sales at the dinner table, but for my brother and I, that’s exactly where our education—and our love of sales—began. My father was
Every sales professional has a horror story that still makes them break out in a cold sweat years later. The deal that imploded spectacularly. The customer interaction that went sideways in ways you couldn’t
Here’s a problem that’ll tie you in knots: You’ve got a killer software solution that saves companies massive amounts of money on employee benefits. You know exactly who needs it: Fortune 1000 companies with
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
Success comes down to knowing exactly how to wield this technology. AI will supercharge every aspect of your sales process when you know how to use it properly.
AI in sales isn’t coming soon. It’s already here, and it’s quietly separating the salespeople who will thrive from those who won’t. On the Sales Gravy Podcast, sales expert and author Victor Antonio shares
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?
I’ve been intrigued by all of the LinkedIn posts lately from sales professionals, leaders, and experts proclaiming the phone is back! Even the “phone-is-dead” evangelists seem to have had a change of heart and
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
Your sales team has the tools. They know the pitch. The CRM is full of leads. So why are half your reps still missing quota? The real issue? Most sales leaders are managing activity
Here’s a question that’ll make your head spin: How do you train MLM recruits who have zero sales experience to actually sell instead of just posting on social media and hoping for the best?
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
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
Short Answer What is priming in sales? Priming in sales is exposing your buyer to specific words, images, stories, and questions that shape their emotional state before you ask for the sale. Buyers who
Steal this trial close technique and exact scripts to motivate buyers to make decisions and act without making big price concessions.
Salespeople fail at cold calling for five common reasons. Fix them and the phone starts producing appointments again.
Most salespeople are looking for the secret edge that will move them to the top of the sales ranking report. The truth though is that there isn’t just one thing that separates top performing
Short Answer How honest should you be in sales? Completely. The moment a customer catches you in even a small lie, like fudging how long a meeting will run, they have every reason to
The best pitch I’ve ever heard about didn’t have a single slide. It had an ax, an elevator, and a crowd that had no idea what was about to happen. The sales storytelling techniques
Sales complacency is the silent performance killer that sets in after winning — and the only defense is returning to the fundamentals that built your success in the first place. Key Takeaways When Success
Quick Summary Reading buyer signals means recognizing the behavioral and psychological cues prospects send before they ghost you, and using that information to keep deals moving toward a real decision. Key Takeaways Listen to
When results drop and motivation fades, the fix is to increase your prospecting activity above your normal baseline, not wait until you feel ready. More calls create more conversations, more conversations create more opportunities,
Are you struggling with employee discipline in your office? People challenges occur most often because there is a lack of structure and understanding of the company goals. How many times do you hear something
If you truly want to do more with the same amount of time each and every day, then begin by developing those self-leadership skills necessary for personal success. Can we agree that: A minute
These 8 keys can help you unlock your sales training and development programs so that you get “the most bang for your buck”. Sales training will be one of the few training and development
Part of the reason so many small business owners are crazy busy is because they are not 100 percent forward-thinking leaders. “We don’t have a budget as much as we need to take this
How frequently in business do we continue to ride dead horses? From ineffective marketing to misaligned operational systems to poor management, all continue to exist even though they are, simply speaking, dead horses. Years
Often, when a sales rep knows the right way to ask for the sale, they’ll be more inclined to do so! This common error costs more sales than most sales leaders are willing to
Sales managers are all around us; those in the selling game have likely encountered multiple. Like salespeople themselves, they have a wide range of qualifications, personality traits and work ethics, but the role of
Early right actions make it easier to accomplish future critical milestones and prepare the team for unforeseen issues that arise later. Do you sometimes wonder how they do it? You know who I mean
Just as there is a set of best ways to paint a room, so there are sets of best ways to ask a question, seek an appointment, build rapport, make a presentation, close the