5 Keys to Outselling the Holidays
Quick Summary The holidays are the most dangerous time of year for salespeople. Distractions pile up, deals stall, and prospecting drops, and the empty pipeline that results can haunt you through March. The fix
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.
Quick Summary The holidays are the most dangerous time of year for salespeople. Distractions pile up, deals stall, and prospecting drops, and the empty pipeline that results can haunt you through March. The fix
Quick Summary At the end of every sales year, you can look back with regret or with reflection. Regret keeps you reliving missed goals and lost deals, and it changes nothing. Reflection helps you
Quick Summary Strong fourth quarter sales start with getting organized early. Set your exact income and revenue number for December 31, call your best and biggest clients first, then work your “A” leads: the
Quick Summary The five sales strategies top performers use to finish the year strong are mastering your emotions so every customer gets your best, following up with velocity instead of giving up after three
Quick Summary December is crunch time for salespeople and sales leaders. With only a few weeks left to hit your number, it’s tempting to start discounting, but the fastest way to make sales in
Quick Summary Unused budget is money your customers set aside for this year and haven’t spent yet. In most companies, it disappears on December 31, and a department that leaves money on the table
Quick Summary OutBound 2026 runs November 9-12 at Red Rock Resort & Spa in Las Vegas. It’s a sales training and leadership conference capped at 400 attendees, where twelve of the world’s best sales
A fractional sales leader’s first 90 days follow a clear arc: a gap assessment, then a rebuild, then a system that runs on its own by day 90.
Cold calling is hard, and anyone who tells you it’s easy is lying to you. You are interrupting people who were not expecting your call, and some of them will be rude to you.
Research perfectionism and paralysis are two of the sneakiest productivity traps in prospecting, because they lead to procrastination.
A fractional sales manager runs your team part-time, on contract, and does the real job of coaching, pipeline reviews, and holding your reps accountable every single week.
Rejection in sales is painful because the brain processes it in the same regions as physical pain. This survival mechanism developed over thousands of years, when exclusion from the group threatened survival.