Are You In It To Win It?
If I get into a game, I play to win. What nobility is there is playing like a slacker? What virtue is purposeful mediocrity? None! I live my life to be a winner. Have
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.
If I get into a game, I play to win. What nobility is there is playing like a slacker? What virtue is purposeful mediocrity? None! I live my life to be a winner. Have
Do you long for a life lived in high gear? One that is filled with joy and achievement? It is possible! How would you like to kick your life into high gear? I can
When you are winning deals, it’s easy to slip into a euphoric mindset and completely forget about the process that got you there in the first place. Out of all the sales rules, there
What would happen to your business results if you just said “no” a little more often? Building business demands that you, as the solo professional, wear many hats. In wearing all of these hats,
Hark back to who you were on interview day. We promised to deliver above and beyond. Chances are, we gave it our all for a while, settled into a groove and have gotten lazy
Working smarter with people entails three key activities: assigning the right number of people, identifying roles and planning compensation strategically. Sure-fire Ways to Work Smarter with People Your sales force is defined by the
Data can do more than tell you facts about your own business. It also can reveal important information about what’s going on with your competitors in the marketplace. How to Be Data Savvy In
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
If you’ve been looking for a way to hit or exceed your annual quota, qualify for President’s Club, or simply earn a bigger paycheck or bonus, focusing on helping business owners reduce their tax
Is Your LinkedIn Personal Branding Built for Buyers or Bystanders? “Respectfully, you are not my audience.” Performance coach Giselle Ugarte said that on a recent episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, and it might
What Does a Perfect Bowling Game Have in Common With Top-Performing Sales Reps? Walk into a bowling alley on a Friday night, and you’ll see a scene that looks like pure recreation. The crash
A strong LinkedIn prospecting sequence is built around subtle, intentional touches. If phone and email are the boxing gloves of prospecting — direct and hard-hitting — LinkedIn is the velvet glove. It softens your
Here’s a truth most car dealerships don’t want to admit: people don’t hate buying cars. They hate buying cars from salespeople who make the customer experience painful. That’s the challenge Brendan Carlington from Mount
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
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?
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
If you ask and they have found good examples, you have an opportunity to collect more stories and the new hire quickly learns what will be rewarded. If you ask and they have found
So, what separates the great channels from the “not-so-great”? Great channel organizations truly focus on what really matters. By doing so, these companies and their people are able to accelerate revenues, increase market share,
Your management team may have implemented a team selling model with great expectations for success. However, team selling doesn’t always live up to its potential. To Team Or Not To Team? Does this sound
Tips for Building a Successful Process for Onboarding New Salespeople To build and sustain a high-performing sales team you must begin with successfully onboarding new salespeople. Getting it right from the start will help
It’s often difficult to motivate sales reps to focus on developing expertise when they want to develop relationships, but the two can go hand in hand. Trust is Not Enough For many years, developing
In the context of selling, a blind spot is something you commonly do within your sales interactions that potentially threatens your success. And here comes the kicker… you’re not aware of it. I’m a
Sales is about relationships. Your sales team can boost your company’s image by blogging, contributing to trade publications, and presenting within your marketplace. Use the Sales Team to Uncover Success Stories Success stories are