How to Negotiate in Sales: 7 Rules That Win the Deal
No matter your industry or deal size, mastering how to negotiate in sales comes down to seven rules that protect your leverage and win more profitable deals.
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.
No matter your industry or deal size, mastering how to negotiate in sales comes down to seven rules that protect your leverage and win more profitable deals.
Summary A LinkedIn social selling strategy works when sellers show up with authenticity, not automation. The biggest mistake sellers make today is using AI to generate posts and messages in bulk, then publishing without
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
Time management is a myth. Time is fixed and unrecoverable — what salespeople can manage is how they choose to spend it. Every sales day presents three types of activities: trivial, important, and impactful.
Summary The easiest way to spot a fake sales guru on LinkedIn is to ask one question: are they selling you something before they’ve proven anything? Fake gurus manufacture credibility through aesthetics and urgency.
Summary How do you know what sales advice to trust? Look at who’s giving it. Credible sales advice comes from people who are actively selling today, have a verifiable track record across years and
Under-slept reps make more mistakes, take longer to respond, remember less, and read prospects worse, all of which show up in fewer calls made and fewer deals closed.
Summary The four principles of effective sales conversations are: (1) people respond in kind, meaning emotions are contagious and you set the tone; (2) people communicate in stories, and the clues to their real
Most salespeople are wired for now. The quota is now. The pipeline review is now. The pressure to close is always right now. And that urgency is exactly what gets in the way when
Summary How do you get your first customers when you have no sales experience and no reputation? Target people who have not committed to a competitor yet. Define a tight ideal customer profile, qualify
Summary Sales reps who sprint through their prospecting activity burn out fast and end up with empty pipelines by mid-quarter. The fix is not working harder out of the gate. It is building a
I was about two years into my sales career when I took a deal I had no business taking. A local business owner was expanding fast, opening new locations all over town, and I
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
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” — Eleanor Roosevelt Is
Salespeople who use bad techniques that get them ignored, screened out, and quickly dumped off a call will still be that same person with the same results using LinkedIn. Ever been to one of
Today’s industrious entrepreneurs, small business owners, and even C Level executives have a new strategy not afforded to past generations – blogging. Today’s industrious entrepreneurs, small business owners to even C Level executives have
Most salespeople repeatedly find themselves navigating waves of extreme highs and lows. During their lowest points, they have to decide whether the metaphorical glass is half-full or half-empty. We’re salespeople. That means that most
Social engineering is asking for information from people that will help other people and the organization as a whole. One reason that most “cold” calls fail and result in rejection is that sales reps
In a recent sales productivity study we conducted for one of our clients, we learned that while their sales reps spend more time on selling activities compared to the external benchmark, they spend a
If you rely on the features and benefits of your product or service to create differentiation… good luck! Start differentiating through the quality and relevant value of your daily interactions with your customers and
Consider how much time and effort you and your sales team spend preparing RFPs. What if you could do this faster and improve your success rate? What Are the Three Most Critical Success Factors
A professional actor would never walk out onto a stage without warming up their instrument to make sure they are communicating at their best. What is your most powerful sales tool? Your website? Video
For leaders, nothing is more important or critical than trust. If people do not trust you, they will not follow you.
On this podcast episode learn the keys to leading and coaching ultra-high performance from respected sales thought leaders, Jeb Blount and Alice Heiman.
On this podcast episode, Jeb Blount and sales leadership guru, Ken Thoreson, discuss how and why modern sales management has changed and where sales leaders need to place their focus to be successful.
The glaring gap in your hiring process is that you are hiring salespeople with no prior experience in lead generation. Are You Tired Of Hiring Bad Salespeople? You may have seen this movie before.
How can you enjoy sustainable and predictable revenues? Here are three ways that can make you the right kind of leader of the sales pack. It’s the second quarter of the year and revenues
Our interpersonal skills and our selling styles often influence buying decisions more than our products or services do. Sales training is great, but, we cannot expect sales training to sustain our success. Think about
People do not need to like you in order to follow your lead and work hard for you or with you as part of a team. Often, our best lessons are learned through stumbling
The cost of a bad hire extends beyond the physical hiring, from running the advertisement to interviewing. If this decision is made in error, other areas of the small business are affected as well. Many
In today’s world, people have a very strong belief in their weaknesses and an even stronger belief not to “brag” about their strengths. Yet, winning teams win because of the strengths of all team