
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

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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
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
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

People are Human Sounds pretty silly, right? Sometimes I find myself forgetting that everyone has their own perspective. We can start to assume that others think and feel the way we do, but this
No matter what type of company you have, there is always a need to find new customers. That’s what sales prospecting is all about regardless of the fancy name you give it. Early in

I want to believe that sales professionalism has evolved. I want to believe that at this time, everyone “gets” that the buyer matters most in the sales conversations. Yet, that isn’t what I’ve experienced.

If sales people (especially in a consultative sale environment) don’t learn the fundamentals of a consultative sales process, they will just stay mediocre at best. So, what are some of the basics that are

Prospecting is the price you have to pay in advance for success in sales and the income you want. -Jeb Blount In this episode of Level Up: From Agent to Entrepreneur podcast, featured sales
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The article suggests using bingo as a teaching tool to handle objections
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On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, I sit down with Mike Weinberg for Part One of our conversation on the state of the Sales Profession, sales leadership, and getting started as a
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