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
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,
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
As individual contributors top Sales Professionals have the luxury of only thinking about themselves. They can selfishly protect their own interests, act as lone wolves, and win at the expense of others. But as
What would happen if existing and future leadership programs were centered around a results-based model of leadership instead of a competency-based one? Think for a moment of a leader you appreciate or admire. Then
It’s not a question of if you should spend money on training, the question is how much will you spend on training. While you’re planning the budget for your organization don’t forget to include
Learn to say “No” thoughtfully and respectfully with the focus on creating a high-performance sales culture. Are you limiting your sales team and the ability to increase sales by not ever saying “No”? Sometimes,
Bullying behavior creates a hostile work environment. Eventually, word will spread about you being the bully boss. With technology, the spread of bullying in schools continues to make front-page news. Schools, corporations, and parents
Sales managers are charged with leading the sales team. Salespeople watch the leader, like kids watch parents, to see if words and actions are congruent. I recently read Stephen M.R. Covey’s book, The Speed
What would happen if each day you scheduled 12 minutes to push yourself away from the desk and take a walk outside or even lock yourself in the bathroom if need be? Just stop
It is imperative that all employees understand how they are profit centers and how all these profit centers connect to the bottom line. Certain paradigms exist within each business culture. These paradigms are philosophical