Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

When every product in your market looks the same, the only way you win is for your competitor to lose.

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount takes a question from Jen, a 20-year sales veteran who moved from TV into digital advertising and has watched three deals in a row end with the prospect sticking with their current provider.

Jeb’s advice starts with the sales process. The buyer’s emotional experience is the most consistent predictor of whether you win, so stop fixating on the close and look at how you run discovery, how many commitments you ask for, and whether you can drive a wedge between the prospect and the incumbent. Sometimes the right move is to walk away before you hand your competitor your proposal. If you sell in a crowded market and keep losing to the incumbent, this episode will help you lay the groundwork for competitive displacement.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why prospects stick with the status quo and what to do when you keep losing deals to no decision
• How to compete in a commoditized market where every company and product looks the same
• The five decisions buyers make before they choose to work with you
• Why past customers, including accounts other reps once handled, are the best place to start prospecting
• How adding steps to your sales process builds buyer commitment through the investment effect
• Why sending your detailed proposal too early can give the incumbent vendor everything they need to keep the account
• How to find out if a prospect is willing to change
• How to ask discovery questions that help prospects realize their current vendor is taking them for granted
• When to walk away from a deal and focus your pipeline on high-probability opportunities

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Your stalled deals are still alive. When the buying window opens, the buyer calls the salesperson they remember. Sales Gravy Master Sales Trainer Duff Tucker breaks down top-of-mind selling: why “just checking in” drains your value, how every touch becomes a deposit or withdrawal in the buyer’s memory bank, the five types of touches that keep you relevant, and the VALUE framework for deciding what’s worth sending.

👉 Download our free 7 Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences Guide

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Check out Duff Tucker's courses on Sales Gravy University

Ask a prospect about their challenges and you’ll get the same answer every other seller heard that week. Marcus Chan, Founder of Venli Consulting, joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down the questions elite reps ask instead, the ones that tie a problem to real consequences and lead buyers to discover latent pain on their own. Marcus walks through an oil change story every rep will recognize and explains how this shift helped his SMB team grow average deal size roughly fourfold.

👉 Download our Free Playbook for Understanding the Four Buyer Styles

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

🔗 Watch the full episode on YouTube!

If you can’t figure out who makes the buying decision, every cold call starts with a guess.

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers a question from David, a business development rep making a high volume of cold calls daily into a highly technical market. His challenge: how much research is enough before you dial, and how do you find the right contact when the decision maker could be an engineer, a project manager, or the CEO?

Jeb’s answer starts with a mindset shift. Prospecting and research are separate jobs, so block time for each and never do both at once. He then walks David through an ABCD list system that moves every lead toward fully qualified, so your first call block goes to appointment-ready prospects and the rest of the day builds tomorrow’s list.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to find the decision maker when job titles don’t tell you who buys
• How to get the gatekeeper to give you the contact you need within the organization
• Why separating prospecting time from research time protects your call blocks
• How to sort prospects into A, B, C, and D lists so every call has a clear goal
• How to build qualifiers that tell you when a lead is ready for an appointment
• Why multithreading matters in complex sales
• How to use AI tools to help you build a local prospecting list in minutes
• How to build an ideal customer profile with your team to stop setting unqualified appointments
• Why every new piece of information counts as a win for SDRs and BDRs

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

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Homeowners decide within seconds whether to trust the person on their porch. Jessica Stokes shares nine door-to-door prospecting tips to make those seconds count, from the because statement that turns a pitch into a conversation to handling objections without arguing and turning a quick doorstep chat into a scheduled follow-up.

👉 Download our free 7 Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences Guide

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Jessica Stokes

Your CRM says the quarter is safe. So why does the forecast keep slipping? Sales Gravy Master Trainer Jessica Stokes joins Jeb Blount Jr. to explain why so many pipelines look bigger than they are, and why deals without a confirmed meeting on the calendar are the first to stall. They dig into the fear that keeps reps clinging to dead deals, a simple 15-minute calendar invite that gets quiet prospects to respond, and how Jessica became her team’s top seller with the leanest pipeline. Whether you carry a quota or coach the people who do, you’ll know exactly which deals are real after your next sales pipeline review.

👉 Download our Free 7 Step Guide to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Jessica Stokes

🔗 Watch the full episode on YouTube!

What should you say on a cold call to book the appointment?

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount takes a question from Ryan, a real estate agent in Brooklyn, New York, who prospects expired listings and FSBOs and wants to know how to structure his because statement to land more meetings.

Jeb’s advice is to get direct. An expired listing came off the market because it didn’t sell, so call it like it is, lead with the value you bring, and ask for the meeting with a specific time. When getting in front of the seller wins you the listing most of the time, the call has one job: book that meeting.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to write a because statement that books appointments on cold calls
• Why passive openers and permission-based questions invite objections
• How to use the prospecting pyramid to organize your call list
• Why FSBO prospecting is a relationship you nurture until the seller is ready
• Why in-person meetings convert better than phone conversations
• How to ask for the appointment assumptively

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Colonel Sanders heard no more than a thousand times while sleeping in his car. Stephen King needed a spike to hold all his rejection letters. Steve Jobs got fired from his own company. Jeb Blount breaks down what salespeople can learn from people who got rejected more than anyone, and why the reps who make the most money are the ones willing to hear no the most.

👉 Download Our Free Playbook for Selling to the Four Types of Buyers

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

Your reps sit through coaching, agree with the feedback, then make the same mistakes on their next call. Jonny Holsten saw this at a company that graded every call on a 27-point sales call scorecard. Every criterion was valid, but the list was too long to remember, so the coaching never stuck. Jonny, founder and CEO of BridgeSelling and author of Fix Your Broken Sales Calls, joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down how to rebuild the scorecard from your own calls. The moves that close deals are already in your best reps’ calls, waiting to be written down.

👉 Download the free 7 Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences

📚 Learn how Sales Gravy can transform your sales organization

🔗  Watch the full video on YouTube

Starting a sales career is hard, and the first year will test your confidence before it rewards your effort.

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers a question from Calee, a former high school teacher and assistant principal who is seven weeks into her first sales role with a $1.1 million quota and a pipeline she calls a disaster. Her question: if Jeb could do year one of his sales career over again, what would he tell himself?

His answer is simple, but not easy: stop worrying about outcomes and just work the process. Jeb explains why it takes most new reps months for sales to click, why pressure only exists in the future you imagine, and how process goals keep you focused on the work that builds pipeline today.

What You'll Learn:

• What to focus on in your first year in sales to avoid early burnout
• Why it takes months for a new sales rep to see results
• How to set process goals that keep you focused on daily prospecting activity instead of quota anxiety
• How to manage sales pressure by focusing on what you can control: your actions, your responses, and your mindset
• Why career changers need to stop projecting past experience onto a new sales role
• How to build a sales pipeline one meaningful conversation at a time
• What golf legend Ben Hogan's advice on process over outcome teaches salespeople
• Why following your sales manager's system pays off even when your instincts push back

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

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Some mornings you wake up ready to prospect. Most mornings you'd rather do anything else. Duff Tucker, filling in for Jeb Blount, explains why that feeling is exactly where freedom starts, and how top performers turn discipline into a pipeline full of options. It all comes back to a core principle: sacrifice what you want now for what you want most.

👉 Download our Free Fanatical Prospecting Call Tracking Sheet

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Check out Duff Tucker's courses on Sales Gravy University

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

Your best rep is sitting at 130% of quota, and every instinct says it's time to hire. So you start writing the job description for another hire, bracing for three to six months of ramp time right when you need momentum most. Kyle Willis, VP of Growth at BELAY, thinks most sales leaders are betting on the wrong rep. Jeb Blount Jr. sits down with Kyle to break down what happens when a top performer gets a virtual sales assistant and wins back 5 to 10 hours a week. One rep pushed past 150% of quota, and her self-sourced pipeline grew enough that marketing could spend less. The difference came down to which work she handed off and which old leads she went back after.

👉 Download Belay's Free "5 Reasons You Aren't Hitting Quota" Guide

🎤 Get your ticket to the OutBound Conference

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

When prospects won't share their pain, pushing harder only raises the wall.

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers a question from Laura, who sells advertising in a crowded local market. Jeb explains why pain-focused discovery sounds self-serving and walks through the five decisions buyers make before they give you money.

What You'll Learn:

• Why pain point questions make prospects hold back
• The real reasons people buy, from aspiration to ego to brand awareness
• The five decisions buyers make before they do business with you
• Why first impressions are not the final word on likability
• Why listening is the fastest way to become likable
• How to ask about a prospect's world and let them tell their story
• How giving your time and attention makes buyers feel important
• How value bridging connects a buyer's goals to your solution
• How micro stories help you sell intangibles through other clients' results
• Why earning trust turns one-time buyers into repeat customers

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

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Red herring objections are a buyer’s emotional self-protection and can derail a sales call fast. But you can break through them with the right approach. Jeb Blount shares a firsthand example from a software demo his own executive team sat through, showing exactly how a rep got baited into a defensive spiral that killed the deal. Jeb explains that most red herrings are built from a lifetime of bad experiences with salespeople and don’t always signal a deal-breaker. He lays out the discipline required to acknowledge these objections calmly, hold the agenda, and keep the sales conversation moving toward its actual objective.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, Objections: The Ultimate Guide for Mastering the Art and Science of Getting Past No

👉 Download the free Objections Book Club Guide for Sales Teams

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

Q2 gave us a lot of great sales conversations. These four taught us the most. Ashley Blount and Jeb Blount Jr. unpack what ties Mark Hunter's take on integrity, a hard-won deal recovery story, tactical language from Jeb Blount for reducing buyer friction, and a leadership lesson on empathy over sympathy. The lesson behind them: the right language, integrity, and mission are what turn conversations into long-term customers.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

👉 Download our free A.C.E.D. Buyer Style Playbook for Sales Professionals

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

How do you know if your sales role is right for you? And how do you get better when you're the only rep on the team with no one to learn from?

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers two questions from Gabriel, an early-career business development rep in Montreal working at a small startup.

Jeb's advice: at the start of your career, you often have to take what you can get and be the best at it, even if it isn't the right fit. As you gain experience, stop chasing the right company and start choosing the right leader. And when there's no top performer to follow, master the fundamentals and build your own learning path.

What You'll Learn:

• Why entry-level salespeople rarely know if a role is the right fit, and why a bad fit still teaches you something
• The questions to ask yourself to discover which sales role fits you best
• Why the right boss matters more than the right company, and how it can mean up to 20% higher income
• How to vet a sales leader during the interview process
• Why loving the sales process matters more than loving the product you sell
• How to earn your role progression
• Why "find the top sales rep and copy them" is not helpful sales advice
• How to build your sales skills without a team around you through networking groups, sales conferences, and training

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

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Follow Jeb Blount on LinkedIn

It’s easy to mistake motion for progress. But answering emails, updating the CRM, and sitting in internal meetings don’t generate revenue. In this episode of Money Monday, Jessica Stokes breaks down the concept of Golden Hours, the specific times during the day when prospects are most likely to pick up the phone or respond to outreach. She explains why protecting that time is one of the best revenue-generating decisions you can make in your sales career. Jessica also offers guidance to sales leaders on shielding their team’s selling windows from internal scheduling conflicts.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Jessica Stokes

👉 Download our Sales Gravy Time Audit Log for Sales Professionals

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

Tony Morris wants you to say less so you'll win more. It's his mantra for prospecting. Tony sat down with Jeb Blount Jr. to discuss how he has reframed his process so that he's not focused on being the seller, but on helping people be the buyer. He shares his rule that every month without contact costs you a slice of the relationship, and why he sends prospects books, articles, and webinar links with no ask attached. This approach breaks through buyer resistance more easily and gets you better conversations with your prospects. Tony will be at Outbound this year talking more about his process and why focusing on curiosity over closing creates more opportunity.

🎟️ Grab your tickets for OutBound Conference

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Tony Morris

👉 Download our free A.C.E.D. Buyer Style Playbook for Sales Professionals

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

How do you actually know someone can sell before you've hired them, trained them, and found out the hard way?

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers two hiring questions from Ramesh: how to find and hire the right salespeople, and whether that approach changes for a small company versus a large one.

Jeb's answer: he's made the same hiring mistakes every leader makes, even after building a career on turning struggling sales teams around. Hiring is part process and part gut, there is no magic formula to get it right every time. The good news is you can stack the odds heavily in your favor with the right approach.

What You'll Learn:

• How whether a role is heavy hunting, heavy account management, or a hybrid should shape who you hire
• Where assessments fit into the hiring process and why
• How to build an assessment stack depending on the complexity of the role
• How to ask situational interview questions tailored to pushed past rehearsed answers
• Why bringing multiple people into the interview process catches what one person reviewing candidates alone will miss
• How a candidate's energy in an interview can mislead you if you don't weigh it against other signals
• Why small companies face higher hiring stakes than large companies, and how to protect yourself from a costly bad hire
• How a long hiring cycle can cost you strong candidates to competitors who move faster

Whether you're building your first sales team or creating a hiring process at scale, this episode gives you a practical framework for making better hiring decisions.

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

Grab your tickets for OutBound Conference

Follow Jeb Blount on LinkedIn

Admitting your company needs sales leadership is one of the hardest calls a founder makes, and one of the smartest. Duff Tucker walks you through seven critical signs that your company has outgrown founder-led sales, from reps getting check-ins instead of real coaching to a forecast that's become a guess instead of a weekly discipline. Duff breaks down what each sign actually looks like and how to spot it in your own company. Showing even one of the seven warning signs is reason enough to consider bringing on a fractional sales leader.

🖋️ Read When to Hire a Fractional Sales Leader: 7 Signs Your Company is Ready

🧑‍💼 Learn more about Sales Gravy’s Fractional Sales Leadership Solutions

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Duff Tucker

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

It sounds unusual, modeling an entire sales methodology off the principles of therapy. But it’s exactly what Jack Frimstone and Zac Thompson did, and it works. Jack and Zac, co-founders of the UK sales consultancy We Have a Meeting, sat down with Jeb Blount Jr. to break down this idea, which they discuss in their book, Sales as Therapy. They go over prospecting techniques that uncover real, often personal stakes behind a buying decision. They also discuss two tools that get more guarded prospects to open up.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

👉 Download our free A.C.E.D. Buyer Style Playbook for Sales Professionals

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

What do you say when a prospect tells you "we already have someone who does that"?

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount tackles this objection with Rob, an outside sales rep who runs into it constantly while prospecting door to door.

Jeb's core message: the real problem is who you're talking to. When you lead with an offer like a free quote or free inspection, gatekeepers default to sending you to procurement, and procurement is where your sales dreams go to die. Change what you open with, and you change who you end up in front of.

What You'll Learn:

• How asking the right questions leads you to the actual decision maker
• Why procurement is where deals stall and how to avoid ending up there
• Why leading with "free" anything triggers defensiveness and routes you straight to procurement
• How a short morning call block can turn cold door knocking into scheduled appointments
• How to turn a local, relationship-driven value proposition into your strongest differentiator against larger competitors
• A script for handling the "we already have someone" objection once you're in front of the right person

Whether you're selling compliance services, B2B solutions, or anything where a gatekeeper stands between you and the real decision maker, this episode gives you a practical way to change who you're talking to before you ever have to overcome an objection.

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

Grab your tickets for OutBound Conference

Follow Jeb Blount on LinkedIn

Even the top sales reps can find themselves on the downward side of a spiral. Jeb Blount’s seen it happen many times, because he’s been there himself. Letting yourself fester in a sales rut can affect your attitude, your motivation, your team, and your job. In this episode, Jeb Blount explains how introspection and self-awareness can refocus your mindset and reroute your rut. He shares a time when his investment in himself brought him out of his rut and put him back on top of the team in just three months. 

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

👉 Download Our Free Goal Planning Guide for Sales Professionals

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

LinkedIn feels like too much work for a lot of professionals, but neglecting it completely leaves one of your best sales tools on the table. Daniel Disney sits down with Jeb Blount Jr. to break down why so many salespeople stay quiet on the one platform where their customers and prospects are logging in daily. Daniel shares his weekly three-post formula that spotlights his team, his customers, and his company. He emphasizes starting your posts with a hook and ending with a reason for people to engage. Lastly, Daniel and Jeb talk about OutBound and why it's the best investment you'll make in your sales career.

🎟️ Grab your tickets for OutBound Conference

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Daniel Disney 

👉 Download our free LinkedIn Profile Makeover Checklist for Sales Professionals

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

How do you run an effective sales blitz, and what's the fastest way to reconnect with cold leads you've already written off?

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers two questions: Chris asks how to structure a sales blitz across existing customers and new logos, and Lindsay asks for Jeb's number one piece of advice for reconnecting with cold leads.

Jeb's answer to Chris starts with a simple truth: a blitz on existing customers should take about 30 days, no longer. You already know who they are and where they are, so the only thing standing between you and results is picking up the phone. New logos take more structure: build a targeted list by persona, company size, and likelihood to buy, assign a closing goal per rep, and run a focused 30 day sprint with daily call targets and twice weekly accountability check ins before rotating to the next product.

For Lindsay, Jeb's advice is easy: you revive dead leads by calling them. He backs it up with real numbers, including a rep who made 11 dials, reached 10 people, and turned four into pipeline opportunities from a completely random list, plus a story about a commercial kitchen equipment company that revived a dead deal into a multi restaurant order just by calling to check in.

What You'll Learn:

• Why a 30 day blitz outperforms a 90 day blitz for existing customer campaigns
• How to build a targeted new logo list using persona, company size, and buying likelihood
• Why leaders need to give reps the exact list, exact script, and exact call target instead of a vague directive to "go blitz"
• How twice weekly accountability check ins keep a blitz from losing momentum
• Why picking up the phone still outperforms every other reactivation tactic for cold and closed lost leads
• How one rep turned 11 random dials into 4 pipeline opportunities in 20 minutes
• Why you should be calling closed lost deals from months or years ago, not just recent ones
• How a single reactivation call turned an old dead deal into a multi location order

Whether you're planning a product launch blitz or sitting on a pile of cold leads you've written off, this episode gives you a clear, practical framework for turning both into revenue.

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

Grab your tickets for OutBound Conference

Follow Jeb Blount on LinkedIn

Cold calling is the hardest task on your to-do list every single day. But it doesn’t have to be. Start by creating a structured, focused block of time on your calendar every day to make your cold calls. No interruptions, no emails, just picking up the phone and dialing. It’s called the Power Hour, and Sales Gravy’s Master Sales Trainer Sarah Greer explains how to make it more fun. Incorporating things like working with a teammate, building pre-call rituals, and even giving yourself a hype song to get yourself started can transform how you feel about cold calling. Use Sarah’s tips in this week’s Money Monday to shed the dread and build confidence around cold calling.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Sarah Greer

📱 Read Can You Make Cold Calling More Fun?

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

Sales teams are buried under more tools than they can actually use. Jill Guardia calls it the 100 tool trap, and she predicts AI is about to shrink the stack instead of expanding it. Jill, SVP of Operations and Chief of Staff at Thought Industries, talks with Ashley Blount and breaks down her three-level framework for winning executive buy-in before building any training program. She also makes the case for slowing discovery down instead of rushing the sales cycle, and digs into why curiosity has disappeared from so many sales conversations, made worse by reps leaning on AI to generate their questions for them.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

👉 Download our free A.C.E.D. Buyer Style Playbook for Sales Professionals

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

If you're not prospecting because you're too busy putting out customer fires, you have a priorities problem.

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers a question from Steven in Texas, who lost deals in his pipeline because he was spending too much time servicing existing customers instead of prospecting and closing.

Jeb's core message: you can never let go of owning the customer relationship, but you have to let go of owning every customer problem. When you become the help desk instead of the salesperson, you stop scaling yourself and your pipeline dries up. Jeb breaks down how to shift from being the chief problem solver to being the quarterback, coaching your support team to fix issues while you hold them accountable through consistent follow up, all without damaging the relationships that keep your business and referrals coming.

What You'll Learn:

• Why the tension between customer service and prospecting is a choice of priorities, not an unavoidable cost of doing business
• How trying to personally fix every customer issue quietly empties your pipeline
• The difference between owning the customer relationship and owning the customer's problem
• How shifting from "chief problem solver" to "quarterback" lets you scale as a salesperson
• How to coach your support team to find solutions instead of solving everything yourself
• Why a disciplined follow up system is what actually protects your customers and your deals
• How to hold your support team accountable while still investing in the relationship with them

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

Grab your tickets for OutBound Conference

Follow Jeb Blount on LinkedIn

Cracks in communication are the fastest way to tank a team sales call. In this episode, Jessica Stokes addresses the common plight of a team sales call: an uncoordinated plan from an unorganized team. Jessica argues that customers evaluate more than the product in these moments. They notice when your sales team can communicate and work together and treat it as a preview of what it looks like to be your customer. She introduces the THRIVE framework as a structure for pre-call planning and post-call debriefs and drives home that unclear ownership stalls deals, while assigned roles and scheduled preparation create momentum and trust.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Jessica Stokes

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

Most B2B messaging fails for one simple reason: it speaks the wrong language. Lisa Dennis has spent over a decade proving that when marketing says one thing, sales says another, and the product team adds a third version, all the buyer hears is noise. Lisa joins Ashley Blount to unpack why account-based marketing keeps underperforming even when the strategy looks solid on paper, and why the fix starts with flipping the entire value proposition on its head. She breaks down the difference between strategy and tactics and how AI is actually creating more room for real strategic thinking instead of replacing it.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Lisa Dennis 

👉 Download our free guide for 25 Ways to Ask for an Appointment on a Cold Call

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

If you are still the only person selling at your company, the worst thing you can do is start hiring before you have a documented process for people to follow.

In this Ask Jeb, Jeb Blount answers two questions on scaling a sales team the right way, one from Yemi, who is building his first team from scratch, and one from Ramesh, who is trying to figure out how to budget for sales pay and support in a B2B healthcare business.

Jeb walks through the three stages every founder hits when they try to grow a team: the solo seller, the roller coaster, and the building phase, including the $45,000 mistake he made this year by skipping straight to hiring without a process in place. He also breaks down how to think about compensation, why a lower base and higher commission actually raises your cost of sale, and how to calculate what a new sale should cost you as your business grows.

What You'll Learn:

• Why documenting your sales process before you scale protects you from expensive turnover
• The three phases every founder cycles through when growing a sales team, and which is the most dangerous one
• Why you have to block time outside of peak selling hours to build out your system instead of waiting until you are desperate
• How bringing in a sales leader to document the process, separate from the founder's own instincts, speeds up the process
• How to calculate cost of sale in and use it to guide your compensation strategy
• Why a low base salary and high commission structure can actually lower your true cost of sale
• Why your margin should determine how much you can afford to pay in commission
• How support staff and infrastructure spending shift as a company grows past its early scrappy stage

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

Grab your tickets for OutBound Conference

Follow Jeb Blount on LinkedIn

It’s the never-ending task that most people push off as long as they can. But knowing the best day of the week, even the best time of day to make cold calls, is a sales skill itself. Jeb Blount tackles one of the most common questions salespeople ask him and discusses the oversaturation of internet studies that all contradict each other on the best times to pick up the phone. If the smartest teams in the business can’t agree on a set time, is there really even a best time to cold call? The trainers at Sales Gravy, backed by years of experience and measurable data, all overwhelmingly agree that there is.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

🎲 Learn more about the OutBound Conference

🖋️ Download our Free Fanatical Prospecting Call Tracker

🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn!

Buyer resistance doesn't stop with the client. Leaders face a second, tougher version of it inside their own teams. Amy Franko and Jeb Blount Jr. get into where the smartest organizations are finding growth right now, and why so many are looking at the accounts they already have instead of chasing new ones. Amy breaks down what it actually takes to get your own team behind a strategy before it ever reaches a customer. She urges sales leaders to make the investment in the OutBound Conference to work through these strategies in person with her.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

🎲 Learn more about the OutBound Conference

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Getting screened out of sales jobs by AI before a human even looks at your resume?

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers a question from Nick, who is trying to move from the rail industry into a sales career and keeps getting screened out by applicant tracking systems.

Jeb's answer is simple: stop treating your job search like an application and start treating it like a prospecting campaign. Nick's rail industry background is the exact expertise that companies selling into that industry are looking for. Jeb breaks down how to identify those companies, use LinkedIn and local networking to get in front of the people who make hiring decisions, and shares a real world example of an in-person walk in that landed a interview in just a few minutes.

What You'll Learn:

• Why resume screening and AI applicant screening systems disqualify non-traditional candidates before a human ever sees their resume
• How to identify companies that sell into your current industry and use your expertise as a shortcut into sales
• Why treating your job search like a prospecting campaign beats just sending in applications
• How to use LinkedIn, your network, and local business owners to get directly in front of hiring managers
• How walking in the door instead of submitting a resume can change the outcome entirely

Whether you're pivoting from a specialized industry or just trying to get noticed instead of filtered out, this episode gives you a practical playbook for getting in front of the right people in your search for a sales role.

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Prospecting can feel like playing the lottery, but treating it like one is a sure way to lose. In this week’s Money Monday, Jessica Stokes explains why the random approach to prospecting fails, and what actually separates reps with full pipelines from reps stuck in feast or famine. She breaks down how to target the right prospects, build lists before you need them, and use enough touchpoints to actually get a response, then leaves you with five questions to determine if your prospecting is working or just running on hope.

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You've been taught to keep a poker face with prospects, and it's costing you their trust. Todd Caponi has spent his career learning the history of sales, and he found that sales started as a service profession. Somewhere in the last several decades, that service mindset was traded for pressure tactics and feature dumps. Todd joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down what it takes to rebuild that trust, drawing on his newest book, The Four Levers of Negotiating, to explain why stiff, perfect pitches repel buyers and why sharing your flaws upfront wins them over instead.

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If you are trying to get budget approved for professional development, wondering whether AI can actually improve your sales coaching, or stuck trying to motivate senior reps who have stopped caring, this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast covers all three.

Jeb tackles three real questions from the field. First, how to build the case for conference budget, whether you are asking for yourself or bringing your whole team. Second, what actually works and does not work when using AI to analyze and coach sales calls. Third, how to create urgency with successful but complacent senior reps who have lost their edge.

What You'll Learn:

• How to build the ammunition you need to justify professional development budget to leadership
• Why framing a sales conference as a reward or a team kickoff event can unlock budget at small companies
• Why Outbound Conference works especially well for small companies that cannot afford a traditional sales kickoff
• Where AI genuinely helps with sales call coaching, and where it falls apart at scale
• How to build a prompt library for AI call analysis and coaching
• Why some of your best reps stop trying and what that actually means
• How a transparent, goals-first conversation can re-engage a complacent top performer
• Why asking a veteran rep to teach the team can reignite their own learning and buy-in

Whether you are fighting for conference budget, experimenting with AI in your sales process, or trying to reach a rep who has checked out, this episode gives you practical, tested approaches you can use right now.

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

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Text messaging is one of the fastest tools in a salesperson's toolkit, but it can also destroy the relationships it's supposed to support. In this episode, Jeb Blount breaks down how to blend intentional texting into your account management process and shares a personal story about losing a longtime vendor relationship after his account manager let texting replace real conversation.

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📱 Read Blending Text Messaging Into Your Account Management Process

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Most reps aren't losing deals because they're lazy. They're losing deals because they're busy with the wrong ones. Mark Hunter joins Jeb Blount Jr. to call out the habits wrecking pipelines everywhere, and hands over the one move that flips a stalled deal into a closed one.

Mark also talks about the OutBound Conference, where he’s been a speaker since the very first event in 2018. He explains why he still shows up every year to challenge his own limiting beliefs alongside other top performers. 

🎟️ Grab your tickets for OutBound Conference

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If you're moving into sales from a completely different industry, you're probably wondering which matters more: how likable you are or how well you run your process.

In this Ask Jeb, Andrew, a former manufacturing supervisor from Manhattan, Kansas now building a sales career, asks Jeb Blount to settle the debate between people skills and sales mechanics.

Jeb breaks sales down into two forces that both matter: the poetry of messaging and relationship building, and the probability of running a consistent process. He explains why he'll bet on a process person over a "gift of gab" person almost every time, why tricks and tactics fail the moment a prospect sees through them, and why the one metric he tracks above all else is qualified first time appointments, the Moneyball number that predicts everything downstream.

What You'll Learn:

• How to diagnose whether a slump is a targeting problem or a skills problem
• How to build a qualification process around the are the one metric that matters most in your business
• Why Jeb bets on a process-driven salesperson over a naturally charming one
• Why sales is both an art and a science
• How the "alternatives equal power" principle plays out in every deal you're chasing
• How a mindset from manufacturing applies directly to building a sales system
• Why relationship building matters, but never at the expense of running your process

If you're new to sales and trying to figure out where to focus first, this episode gives you the framework to build your foundation the right way.

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

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What does it really take to build something great? It’s grind and refusing to stay down when you hit a wall. In this week’s Money Monday, Jeb Blount Jr. shares the story behind Sales Gravy’s early Everest and how the company scaled it instead of giving in. From the COVID-era studio investment that turned into a global advantage, to a strategic hire who walked away three weeks in, Jeb reveals that there really is no secret formula. You just have to get back up, again and again.

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Ask a top performer what makes them successful, and they will often tell you, "I've just got great relationships." But that's not something a sales leader can coach or teach to the rest of the team. 

In this episode, sales advisor and author Jeff Bajorek joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down how leaders can push past that response and uncover the specific, repeatable behaviors, from always picking up the phone to making one more call at the end of the day. He also covers why relationship-building looks different for every rep, and how leaders can coach to a process without forcing everyone into the same exact playbook.

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

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How do you know when a third party lead generating service is actually worth what you're paying for it, and should your team be leaving a voicemail on every single call?

In this week's Ask Jeb, Jeb Blount answers two questions, one from Mike, who runs a commercial signage business selling into real estate developers, general contractors, and architects, and one from Michael, whose SDRs are making 50 to 75 calls a day.

Jeb's answer to Mike is simple: in most B2B spaces, you never fully give up on a lead. Once a project closes, that lead moves into a nurturing campaign, not the trash, and a good lead gen partner earns its keep by spotting new opportunities before they're too far down the road.

For Michael, Jeb breaks down the three tier calling structure his own team uses to decide who gets a call, who gets a voicemail, and who gets cut loose, plus why building a homogenous list makes that whole process faster.

What You'll Learn:

• Why B2B leads should almost never be fully abandoned, even after a project closes
• What separates a lead gen service worth paying for from one that's just handing you a list
• How to build a three tier calling structure using qualified leads
• Why inbound leads should always get called before any cold outreach
• When it makes sense to skip the voicemail entirely on a cold list
• How building a homogenous prospecting list speeds up your voicemail messaging
• The five step voicemail framework that gets you on and off the phone in under a minute

Whether you're running a signage company chasing commercial real estate projects or managing a team of SDRs working a cold list, this episode gives you two practical frameworks: one for knowing when to let a lead go quiet, and one for knowing exactly who to call first.

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What separates ultra-high performers from every other salesperson? It's Fanatical Prospecting. In this week’s Money Monday, Jeb Blount explores why a full pipeline is the ultimate predictor of sales success and reveals the simple, repeatable habit that top earners use every day to outsell the competition three to one.

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Today's buyers have already done the research before they ever talk to a seller, so why do deals still stall out? Victor Antonio joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down buyer resistance as a physics problem and says that friction, not objections, is what actually kills deals. They dig into why AI-educated buyers don’t need sellers to educate them; they need someone to validate what they’ve learned and give them the confidence to decide. They navigate what that shift means for sellers standing in the last mile of the decision. Victor also previews his session at this year's Outbound Conference, focused on the future of selling in an AI-driven market.

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If you sell into large companies, the biggest mistake you can make is prospecting the obvious title instead of the right one.

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers a question from Martin, who runs a high-end corporate gifting business and wants to know how to get decision makers at Fortune 500 companies to pay attention.

Jeb's answer starts with a simple filter: are these gifts going to employees or to customers? That single question determines whether you start in HR or in sales and marketing, and it changes everything about your prospecting approach. From there, Jeb walks through how to build a target list, how to use tools like ZoomInfo paired with LinkedIn to map an org chart and find real contact information, and why case studies and testimonials are the fastest way to make a new prospect feel safe saying yes.

What You'll Learn:

• How to decide between targeting inside a large account
• How to use tools like ZoomInfo paired with LinkedIn to build an org chart and find the right contact
• Why big company buyers are motivated by avoiding risk more than by getting excited about your product
• How to use existing customers as case studies and testimonials to build trust with new prospects
• How many target accounts you actually need in your pipeline to make relationship-based selling pay off
• What to do before you ever hire your first salesperson as a small business owner

Whether you're trying to break into your first Fortune 500 account or building out a sales team for the first time, this episode gives you a practical framework for finding the right person to sell to and proving you're safe to do business with.

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

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Most sales reps spend their entire career chasing a number someone else set for them. In this Money Monday, Brad Adams, Senior Master Trainer at Sales Gravy, breaks down why quota is the wrong target — and what ultra high performers focus on instead. Four specific needle movers separate reps who hit quota from the ones making million dollar months look repeatable.

🎥 Check out Brad's Sales Gravy University Page

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Fred Joyal sat at his first sales desk with a phone and a list of prospects, and couldn't make a single call. Years later, he'd built a business that generated over a billion dollars in revenue. Fred, co-founder of 1-800-DENTIST, joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down the system that took him from frozen to fearless, and why the reps who win aren't the ones who feel ready, they're the ones who act first. They dig into how to build boldness through small, low-stakes reps before you need it in the moments that matter, why role playing is the fastest way to close more deals, and the story behind a $250,000 bet on live television. Fred also shares what happened when he said yes to an unexpected moment with Richard Branson, and why that yes changed everything.

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On this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, two callers bring Jeb Blount their prospecting problems. Calvin sells keynote speeches into a niche market and is stuck trying to find the one right person to call inside each organization. Dennis runs a sales outsourcing company and wants hard proof, not opinion, that cold calling still works so he can convince his own team.

Jeb's answer to Calvin is that there is no single right contact, there is a buying group, and the job is to multithread the account and reach all of them. His answer to Dennis is backed by real numbers, including a $250,000 day his own team generated from structured outbound calling when everyone had written off cold calling as dead.

What You'll Learn:

• Why the real question in niche prospecting is not who to call, but how many people in the org you need to reach
• How to multithread an account so you are not depending on one decision maker
• How Jeb's team turned a missed plan into a $250,000 day using nothing but structured outbound calling blocks
• What real cold calling conversion data looks like, from dials made to pickups to booked appointments
• Why mornings should be reserved for dials and afternoons for asynchronous touches like email, video and social
• Why small business owners answer their phones differently than executives, and what that means for when you should be calling

Whether you are prospecting into a niche market or trying to prove to your own team that the phone still works, this episode has something for you.

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Most salespeople have heard the same advice at some point. Sell yourself if you want the job, the deal, or the room to like you. It sounds right. It isn't. People love to buy, but they hate to be sold, and that includes being sold on you.

In this episode, Jeb Blount breaks down why "sell yourself" is one of the worst pieces of advice in sales, using a personal story about a dinner conversation that seemed great in the moment and fell apart the second it ended. He makes the case that the harder someone pushes their own pitch, credentials, or charisma, the faster they push people away.

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