Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Burnout Is 100% Preventable

In the world of sales, it’s easy to lose sight of how our mental and physical health are connected. We’re so focused on hitting our targets that we often ignore the signs of burnout until it’s too late. Unfortunately, neglecting this balance can really take a toll on our overall well-being.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount and Jahmie Hilecher, founder of The Move Wellness, discuss the importance of prioritizing health and wellness to support productivity and success.

They emphasize the significance of making conscious choices about food and nutrition, as well as the impact of deep breathing on reducing stress and improving mental clarity. They also highlight the connections between physical and mental well-being and provide practical tips for incorporating healthy habits into daily routines.

• Prioritizing health and wellness is crucial for supporting productivity and success. Our well-being directly affects our ability to perform at our best and achieve our goals.
• Making conscious choices about food and nutrition can have a significant impact on energy levels and mental clarity. It is essential to nourish our bodies with wholesome and nutritious food that provides the necessary fuel for optimal performance.
• Deep breathing exercises help reduce stress and improve focus during sales calls and meetings. Taking a moment to focus on our breath and engage in deep breathing exercises can help us manage stress and promote a calm and centered state of mind.
• Physical and mental well-being are interconnected, and taking care of one supports the other. By engaging in regular physical activity, we not only improve our physical fitness but also support our mental health by reducing stress and promoting a positive mood.
• Starting the day with stretching and movement can enhance overall well-being. Incorporating stretching and movement into our morning routine can help wake up our bodies and increase blood flow, leading to improved flexibility and overall well-being.
• Taking intentional breaths throughout the day can bring a sense of presence. In the midst of a busy day, it is important to pause and take intentional breaths to bring ourselves back to the present moment. Focus on your breath and take deep, mindful breaths to increase oxygen flow to your brain.

Stopping Burnout In Its Tracks Begins With Awareness

It’s only when we experience burnout that we realize we’ve overlooked our physical health and need to address it.

However, without a healthy body to support you, this mindset is not sustainable. Sleep is crucial not only for your physical well-being but also for your brain function. Certain systems in your body need time to restore and recharge, enabling you to achieve greater success in the long run.

Taking care of your basic needs, such as getting enough sleep, eating clean and healthy, taking proper breaks and rest throughout the day, having fun, and engaging in daily movement, is essential. It doesn’t have to be lifting weights in the gym; any form of movement can enhance communication, clarity, and creativity in your brain. Prioritizing these aspects will ultimately support you in achieving your goals for a longer period and with greater strength.

Sales Professionals Are The Elite Athletes of The Business World

If we consider salespeople, especially top salespeople, from a different perspective, we can see that they possess crucial skills for modern selling.

However, your mental capacity to be creative and find solutions, as well as your ability to be a consultant, will always be limited by your physical capacity. Many people don’t think about it this way. But when I talk about sales professionals being the elite athletes of the business world, I mean that you need both physical and mental strength.

When we think about mind, body, and spirit, we can see that the combination of the mind and body creates a flow. This flow leads to finding solutions and experiencing happiness and joy. We have been taught, especially as Americans, to work first and then play, rarely considering the connection between the two.

3 Ways To Improve Your Mind-Body Connection and Prevent Burnout Prioritize Daily Movement

Firstly, movement increases oxygen circulation to the brain, supporting cognitive thinking and enhancing focus during sales calls and important meetings. Secondly, consistent movement throughout the day can help reduce stress levels and activate the body’s relaxation response, leading to a calmer and more confident state of mind.

Additionally, movement promotes better physical health, which is crucial for sales professionals to maintain high energy levels and a sharp mind. Engaging in regular exercise and movement also supports better sleep quality, which is essential for optimal cognitive function and decision-making. By incorporating daily movement into their routine, sales professionals can boost their overall well-being, increase their productivity, and ultimately achieve greater success in their sales endeavors.

Be Conscious Of Your Nutrition

Sales professionals should be conscious of their diet and make healthful nutritional choices because what they eat directly impacts their physical and mental well-being, which in turn affects their performance. Making conscious choices about food can provide sales professionals with sustained energy, mental clarity, and focus throughout the day.

By fueling their bodies with nutritious foods, such as fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains, sales professionals can maintain stable blood sugar levels, avoid energy crashes, and enhance their cognitive function.

Additionally, a healthful diet supports overall physical health, including maintaining a healthy weight, boosting immune function, and reducing the risk of chronic diseases. By prioritizing their nutrition, sales professionals can optimize their energy levels, improve their ability to handle stress, and project confidence, ultimately leading to more effective sales interactions and greater success in their careers.

Focus On Your Breath

Taking a moment to intentionally focus on your breath can have several positive effects on your well-being and performance.

1. Stress reduction: When you pause to slow your breath, you activate the body’s relaxation response. This helps counteract the fight-or-flight response that is often triggered during busy or stressful situations. Slowing down your breath signals to your brain that you are safe and not in immediate danger, promoting a sense of calm and reducing stress levels.
2. Increased focus and mental clarity: By becoming aware of your breath, you bring your attention to the present moment. This can help quiet the mind and reduce distractions, allowing you to focus more effectively on the task at hand. Slow, conscious breathing provides a steady flow of oxygen to the brain, improving cognitive function and enhancing mental clarity.
3. Emotional regulation: Taking a pause to slow your breath can help regulate your emotions during a busy or stressful day. It allows you to observe and acknowledge any negative emotions or stressors without immediately reacting to them. This increased self-awareness gives you the opportunity to choose how you respond to challenging situations, promoting emotional balance and resilience.
4. Enhanced decision-making: Slowing your breath and being aware of your breathing can help you make better decisions, especially in high-pressure situations. When you are calm and present, you can access the executive functions of your brain more effectively, allowing for clearer thinking, problem-solving, and rational decision-making.
5. Improved physical well-being: Deep, intentional breathing supports proper oxygenation of the body, promoting overall physical well-being. It can help regulate heart rate, lower blood pressure, and reduce muscle tension. Additionally, conscious breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for rest and relaxation, promoting a state of physical ease and reducing the negative effects of stress on the body.

By prioritizing movement, nutrition, and breath, sales professionals can nurture their physical and mental well-being, prevent burnout, and promote a strong mind-body connection.

These practices contribute to sustained energy, enhanced cognitive function, improved emotional regulation, and increased resilience in the face of challenges.

Ultimately, they support sales professionals in achieving optimal performance, maintaining a healthy work-life balance, and enjoying long-term success in their careers.

Finding a sense of balance, investing in our physical health, and protecting our mental well-being are all steps we can take to ensuring that we are in the right mindset to tackle our sales day. For more tips around mindset, productivity, and advancing your sales career, go to Sales Gravy University, the world’s most powerful sales training engine.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Why Roleplay Should Be A Key Part of Your Sales Culture

In this podcast, Jeb Blount, Jeremy Olson, and Kristin Isaacson discuss the importance of role-playing in sales. They emphasize the need for leaders to create a culture of role-playing and accountability within their teams. They also highlight the benefits of roleplaying in helping salespeople improve their skills, gain empathy for the customer’s perspective, and build confidence. They encourage individuals to find their preferred style of roleplaying and commit to regular practice, even if it feels uncomfortable at first.

• Roleplaying in sales is a powerful tool that helps salespeople improve their skills, gain empathy for the customer’s perspective, and build confidence. It allows them to practice and refine their sales techniques in a safe environment.
• Leaders play a crucial role in creating a culture of roleplaying and accountability within their teams. By embracing and encouraging roleplaying, leaders can foster a collaborative and growth-oriented atmosphere that drives individual and team improvement.
• Consistency and commitment are key to successful roleplaying. It should be a regular part of the sales process, rather than a one-time activity. Salespeople should make a commitment to practice regularly, even if it feels uncomfortable at first.
• Roleplaying exposes weaknesses and areas for improvement. By simulating different scenarios, salespeople can identify their strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to focus on areas that need development and enhancing their overall performance.
• Constructive feedback and coaching are essential for growth in roleplaying. Salespeople should seek feedback from their leaders, peers, or even trusted individuals outside the team. This feedback helps them identify areas for improvement and refine their approach.

Creating a Culture of Role-Playing

One key takeaway from this podcast episode is the role of leaders in fostering a culture of role-playing within their teams. By encouraging and embracing roleplaying exercises, leaders can establish an environment where individuals feel safe to practice and refine their sales techniques. This culture of accountability sets the stage for continuous growth and improvement.

Benefits of Role-Playing

Roleplaying allows salespeople to step into the shoes of their customers, understand their perspective, and develop empathy. By simulating real-life scenarios, sales professionals gain insight into the challenges and concerns their customers may face. This understanding enables them to ask the right questions, provide tailored solutions, and build stronger relationships.

Moreover, roleplaying serves as a platform for salespeople to enhance their skills and build confidence. Through practice and repetition, they can refine their pitch, overcome objections, and improve their overall sales performance. Roleplaying provides a controlled environment where individuals can experiment, receive feedback, and make necessary adjustments.

The Role of Consistency

Consistency is a vital component of effective roleplaying. Just as athletes train regularly to maintain peak performance, salespeople must commit to regular practice. Consistent roleplaying ensures that skills remain sharp, and individuals continue to grow. It is not a one-time activity but an ongoing process that drives continuous improvement.

Unifying the Team

Roleplaying has a unifying effect on sales teams. It establishes a shared language, understanding, and approach to sales. By engaging in roleplaying exercises together, team members develop a collaborative mindset and foster a sense of camaraderie. This collaborative atmosphere promotes knowledge-sharing, peer feedback, and mutual support, leading to a stronger, more cohesive team.

Overcoming Discomfort and Embracing Growth

While role-playing may initially feel uncomfortable, it is crucial to overcome this discomfort to reap its benefits fully. Sales professionals should recognize that discomfort is a sign of growth and improvement. Embracing the practice of role-playing with a growth mindset allows individuals to step outside their comfort zones, challenge themselves, and continually enhance their skills.

Feedback and Coaching

Constructive feedback and coaching play a pivotal role in maximizing the impact of role-playing. Salespeople should actively seek feedback from their leaders, peers, or trusted individuals outside their team. This feedback helps identify areas for improvement and provides valuable insights for refining sales techniques. Regular coaching sessions allow sales professionals to address weaknesses, build on strengths, and continuously enhance their performance.

Making Roleplaying a Priority

To make roleplaying effective, it must become an integral part of the sales process. It should be viewed as a non-negotiable activity, similar to going to the gym. Just as consistency is key in physical fitness, regular roleplaying is crucial for sales fitness. By prioritizing role-playing, sales teams can develop a culture of continuous learning, improvement, and success.

There is immense value in roleplaying in sales. From building empathy and enhancing skills to fostering team unity and personal growth, roleplaying is an essential tool for sales professionals. By creating a culture of roleplaying and embracing its benefits, sales teams can unlock their full potential and achieve extraordinary results.

The innovative Sales Gravy University sales training platform gives on the go individuals and entire teams easy, affordable access to the world’s top sales trainers in both live and on-demand courses. Now you can learn how to win in sales anywhere, anytime, and on any device. 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Sales Presentation Skills That Get You To “Yes” Faster

In this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount talks to renowned sales experts Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz about their “Go For No” approach to embracing rejection in sales. They discuss how the fear of “no” sabotages sales presentations and what salespeople can do to deliver more successful and engaging presentations that get them to “yes”.

• The fear of failure and rejection can sabotage sales presentations and affect performance.
• Embracing rejection and understanding its value can lead to more successful sales presentations. The “Go for No” strategy involves intentionally increasing failure rate and using each “no” as valuable data for growth.
• Preparation and structure are essential in delivering compelling sales presentations. Improvisation in sales presentations can come across as unprofessional or unprepared. Don’t just show up and throw up.
• Storytelling is a powerful tool to engage the audience and connect with them on a deeper level. Sharing stories about overcoming challenges and how your solution helped can capture attention and emotions.
• Losing your place or stumbling over words during a presentation is common, but maintaining composure and smoothly continuing is key.
• Well-prepared presentations instill confidence in the salesperson and engage the audience more effectively. But it’s important to bring passion and authenticity to sales presentations rather than striving for perfection.

The Fear Of “No” Derails Sales Presentations

In the dynamic world of sales, where each presentation is an opportunity to forge valuable connections and secure vital deals, a formidable adversary often lurks in the shadows—the fear of failure and rejection. It’s a sentiment that frequently courses through the veins of salespeople, affecting their confidence and ultimately their performance. This fear, while entirely human, can become an insidious obstacle to delivering compelling sales presentations.

But here’s the paradox: it’s precisely this fear, when understood and harnessed, that can catapult a salesperson from mediocrity to mastery. This podcast delves into the heart of this challenge, exploring why salespeople often grapple with the fear of rejection and failure, how it affects their ability to engage their audience, and most importantly, why embracing this fear can be a game-changer in the competitive world of sales.

What Is “Go For No” All About?

The concept of “Go for No” is about intentionally increasing your failure rate and intentionally hearing “no” more often. The idea behind this is that when you embrace rejection, it paves the way for more “yeses” to come.

However, this doesn’t mean that you should simply keep hearing “no” without making any improvements or using the feedback from those rejections. It’s important to treat each “no” as valuable data for growth. For instance, you can set goals based on the number of “no” responses you aim to receive, and actively seek out opportunities to hear “no.”

Don’t Show Up and Throw Up

In the world of sales presentations, there’s a phrase that often rings true: “Don’t show up and throw up.” It’s a cautionary mantra that reminds salespeople of the importance of preparation and structure in their interactions with potential clients. Showing up unprepared, with no more than a vague idea of what to say, can lead to a meandering and unconvincing pitch. Instead, successful sales presentations require careful planning.

Salespeople should have their notes ready to go, create a basic outline for the conversation, and prepare specific talking points. While improvisation might seem like a way to appear more “natural,” it often results in coming across as unprofessional or unprepared. A well-prepared presentation not only instills confidence in the salesperson but also engages the audience more effectively.

And the truth is, when people speak without preparation, they often start in the middle and then backtrack to mention something they forgot. Eventually, they reveal their main point, which they were saving for the end. Sometimes, the desire to sound natural can be exaggerated.

However, it is perfectly fine to take a step-by-step approach. For example, lawyers in a courtroom follow a clear path. They ask a question, receive an answer, and mark it as completed on their yellow notepad.

Feature Dumps Don’t Engage Audiences, Storytelling Does

Sales presentations are not just about pitching products or services; they’re about engaging the audience. One powerful way to achieve this is through storytelling. Rather than launching into a dry pitch, consider weaving a compelling narrative into your presentation.

Share a story about someone who faced a challenge similar to what your audience might be experiencing and highlight how your solution came to their rescue. Stories have a unique ability to capture people’s attention and emotions, making them lean in and connect with your message on a deeper level. In the realm of sales, it’s not just about what you’re selling, but the story you’re telling.

What to Do If You Lose Your Place During a Presentation

Even with the best preparation, unexpected hiccups can occur during a sales presentation. One common fear is losing your place or stumbling over your words. The important thing to remember in such moments is not to freeze. A momentary pause to collect your thoughts can work wonders. Your audience is unlikely to remember a minor fumble in your presentation.

What they will remember is how you handled it. By maintaining composure and continuing smoothly, you demonstrate professionalism and resilience. So, the next time you find yourself momentarily lost during a presentation, take a deep breath, regain your bearings, and confidently continue. It’s a small hiccup in the grand scheme of your presentation’s impact.

Bring Passion To Your Presentations, Not Perfection

However, when I started out, I would replay my speeches and criticize myself. I would be embarrassed and beat myself up over mistakes or missed elements. It was excruciating, and I would feel so horrible that I didn’t want to face anyone.

But then, people would tell me that it was the best speech they had ever heard. I realized that nobody really notices when you make a mistake, unless it’s a major blunder. People don’t pay much attention to it.

You may notice and feel the mistakes, but they don’t. They see you responding to adversity with grace, and they can relate to that. But I realized that people appreciate me giving my all, even if I stumble or make up words sometimes.

As a salesperson, you may not be speaking in front of thousands of people, but the same principles apply. I bring my own energy and authenticity, and that’s what people love.

So, first off, remember that you don’t need to be perfect. Be yourself and bring your passion to your presentations. That’s what will resonate with your audience.

Overcoming The Fear Of Failure Is Crucial To Your Success

Embracing rejection and overcoming the fear of failure is crucial for success in the dynamic world of sales. By intentionally increasing our failure rate and treating each “no” as an opportunity for growth, we pave the way for more “yeses” to come. It is important to approach sales presentations with careful planning, preparation, and structure, avoiding the pitfall of showing up unprepared.

Utilizing storytelling techniques helps to engage the audience on a deeper level, while maintaining composure and confidently continuing in the face of unexpected hiccups showcases professionalism and resilience. Ultimately, it is not about striving for perfection, but about bringing our passion and authenticity to our presentations, resonating with our audience and forging valuable connections in the competitive realm of sales.

The innovative Sales Gravy University sales training platform gives on the go individuals and entire teams easy, affordable access to the world’s top sales trainers in both live and on-demand courses. Now you can learn how to win in sales anywhere, anytime, and on any device. 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Delivering A Next-Level Customer Experience

In this Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount talks to Clare Dorrian, SugarCRM’s CMO, about putting people first, building human connections, and prioritizing the customer experience in a saturated market.

Clare shares expert insights on outbound prospecting, multi-channel engagement, and building a strong sales culture.

Their conversation covers a range of topics, including the evolution of sales and marketing, the role of relationships in modern selling, and driving pipeline growth through real connection.

• In a highly competitive market, differentiation is key. Sales organizations should prioritize customer service and engagement as a means to drive pipeline growth and set themselves apart from competitors.
• Outbound prospecting is essential for building pipeline and requires a team effort, with every member of the organization contributing to pipeline growth.
• Building a strong sales culture means aligning goals and KPIs across departments, and promoting a team sport mentality that encourages collaboration and communication.
• By identifying customer challenges and demonstrating how a recommended product or solution can help solve them, sales professionals can build trust and create value for their customers.
• Sales professionals must leverage multichannel, multilayer engagement for reaching decision-making committees.
• Salespeople can deliver a next-level buying experience by meeting customers where they are and understanding their communication preferences.
• Companies can differentiate themselves in a highly competitive market by prioritizing people, building strong relationships, and providing value to customers.
• When sales organizations focus on the customer experience, build a strong sales culture, and promote collaboration and communication across departments, they can drive pipeline growth and set themselves up for long-term success.

Sales And Marketing Are Human Endeavors

Maintaining a focus on human relationships is a differentiating factor for sales organizations, especially in a world where technology seems to be pushing us further away from personal connection.

From a marketing standpoint, this emphasis on connection can be leveraged to generate leads and get more opportunities.

Ultimately, success in your sales organization depends on having the right people who not only understand what your product or service is designed to do, but also know its boundaries. In fact, this expertise is exactly what allows smaller sales forces to be nimble, show more appreciation for customers, and differentiate from their Goliath competitors.

This philosophy should be ingrained in your culture from top to bottom, from the way you recruit to the way you collaborate.

This focus on people is an important differentiator in marketing and go-to-market strategies, but when it is a key part of your DNA, competitors take notice.

Make It Easy For The Customer To Do Business With You

In terms of customer experience, It’s not just about believing that the customer is always right, but rather prioritizing the customer above all else. This mentality should extend to sales professionals as well. It’s important to remember that a prospect is not yet a customer, but their emotional experience during their journey with you is a consistent predictor of outcomes more so than any other variable.

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a sales pitch? We all have at some point in our lifetime.

But which pitches do you remember? You probably remember the ones where the salespeople had an emotional connection with you.

Of course, the price had to be right and the product had to fit your requirements. But what made the difference was when the experience was memorable, and these memories accumulate over time.

It should be easy and enjoyable for people to do business with you. Each time a customer interacts with your organization, their experiences add up, which creates customer loyalty and long-term retention.

Sales And Marketing Alignment Means Working Together— Not In Siloes

There has been a complete revolution in the last 20 years. Today, sales and marketing are more connected than ever before.

The pressure on CMOs to generate inbound leads and build the pipeline is immense. However, they are often measured against the success of the sales organization, which they have little control over. CMOs who recognize the amount of money spent on creating opportunities and bringing in leads understand that their ability to deliver on goals is impacted if they are not directly tied to the sales organization and driving their activity.

Similarly, if the sales organization is not giving feedback to the CMOs or not directly tied to them, they will also struggle to achieve their goals.

Some organizations make the marketing team solely responsible for generating leads, but it should be a team sport. Marketing should work toward a demand generation goal, but so should the sales team.

It’s not effective to simply lob marketing materials over the fence to sales— that’s not how partnerships are built. To achieve true partnership, start by aligning our goals and KPIs and then stack your initiatives accordingly.

Getting everyone working together is essential. Sales and Marketing are more likely to see the fruits of their combined efforts when both teams take accountability for revenue.

Don’t Let Distance Get In The Way

In recent years, it has become more challenging since we are all more distributed than ever before. Sales teams are accustomed to being on the road and visiting customer sites, dealing with forecasts and sending communications while on the go. Certain marketing functions, on the other hand, may not require as much travel.

The past couple of years have taught marketing teams that we all share a level playing field, because so many of us are working remotely.

This level playing field provided opportunities for agile organizations to take advantage of the situation.

How Sugar CRM Uses “Shark Week” To Build Their Pipeline

A few years ago, SugarCRM introduced a competition called “Shark Week” to bring together marketing, business development, sales, partners, and others, to focus on driving pipeline together. They formed teams and had prizes throughout the day and at the end of the week, including top team and individual prizes.

This intentional effort to work towards shared goals was transformational in introducing a DNA into their culture for outbound prospecting that they previously lacked. They only saw a material difference in the results when they introduced a fun, competitive team approach to prospecting where everyone had skin in the game. Salespeople like to win, after all.

Are Sales Contests Worth The Investment?

For their mid-market business, it generated two million dollars in revenue and only cost sixty thousand in prize funds. The return on investment was phenomenal for their organization.

Sales contests like Shark Week can be used as a training tool, but it also puts pressure on competitors. When everyone in the company participates, competitors’ phones are ringing with inquiries and they have to work harder to keep their business.

This presents an opportunity to gain a competitive edge, take their business, and grow your own in the process.

2 Sales Strategies That Stand The Test Of Time Understand Their Business Challenges

At the end of the day, nobody likes feeling pressured. As a salesperson, your responsibility is to find a challenge or pain point that you can help solve. Start by identifying the pain point and demonstrating to the customer how you can help.

Avoid conversations that focus solely on pricing or perks without an understanding of the core business problem. Put your ego aside and focus on how you can help the customer. Avoid a hard sell and instead focus on finding a pain point that you can confidently speak to. Don’t overlook the influencer in the decision-making process and make sure to communicate in a way that is meaningful to all involved parties.

Multi-Channel and Multi-Layered Outreach

When engaging with potential customers, think multi-channel and multi-layered. Decision-making committees are getting larger every day, so winning over the CEO or CFO is not enough. Make sure you are touching everyone involved in the decision-making process and doing it in a way that is meaningful to them. Ask them how they prefer to be communicated with and meet them where they are.

Building Pipeline Is A Team Sport

Sales and marketing alignment can be achieved when there is a dedicated focus on setting shared goals and KPIs, promoting a team sport mentality, and encouraging collaboration and communication across departments.

Likewise, with outbound prospecting, a team effort is essential for building pipeline, and every member of the organization needs to contribute. By identifying customer challenges and demonstrating how a recommended product or solution can help solve them, sales professionals can build trust and create value for their customers.

When sales organizations focus on the customer experience, build a strong sales culture, and promote collaboration and communication across departments, they can drive pipeline growth and set themselves up for long-term success.

Learn more about how to deliver a legendary customer experience, stand out in a saturated market, and align sales and marketing efforts on Sales Gravy University.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A Great Modern Seller Leverages These 5 Skills

In this podcast, Jeb Blount and Amy Franko discuss the importance of modern sellers having strong business acumen and an ownership mindset. They emphasize the value of being able to provide insight to executives based on knowledge of their organization, rather than regurgitating information that can be found online. They also discuss the importance of discipline and habits in maintaining success as a salesperson, especially when working from home. Finally, they touch on the rebirth of field sales and the importance of building strong relationships with leadership.

• Instead of simply regurgitating information that can be found online, sellers must have a deep knowledge of their clients’ organizations in order to provide business insights that are truly valuable.
• Ask provocative questions that create awareness of potential problems or opportunities within the organization.
• Build strong relationships with leadership and even going as far as getting into the “bowels” of the organization to get a better understanding of what’s happening.
• Modern sellers must also have an ownership, or entrepreneur, mindset. They should look at their sales territory as a business, and make decisions based on the top and bottom line as well as weigh risks and opportunities.
• Discipline and habits are also crucial for maintaining success as a modern seller. For instance, you should build a strong plan, set goals, track your activities and metrics, and adapt to changes in the sales landscape.
• Building strong relationships with leadership and being able to adapt to changes in the sales landscape.

What Differentiates A Modern Seller?

The truth is that there are core basic activities that every salesperson must perform.

Modern sellers have elevated these skills, honing the craft of selling to rise above their competitors and sell differently – and better.

When Amy was doing research for her new book, The Modern Seller, she noticed a particular set of skills that stood out from the rest in terms of indicators of success for salespeople. There are the “everyday skills” of prospecting, presenting, negotiating, and closing. Then there are five skills that modern sellers consistently do better than others, and are clear differentiators.

1. Agility
2. Entrepreneurship
3. Holistic Sales Territory and Pipeline Management
4. Strategic Relationship Building
5. Ambassadorship

Through Amy’s career and observations, she has found that mastering these five skills is key to standing out as a top seller. Whether you are an individual seller or a leader building these skills in yourself or your team, these are skills that you should prioritize for the future.

Modern Sellers Are Masters Of Business Acumen

One of the biggest challenges for sellers today is the level of business acumen that they are expected to have. It’s not just about having a feature-benefit-price conversation anymore. Instead, sellers must study the client’s business and industry to have more in-depth, business-oriented conversations.

Modern sellers need to display a level of business acumen that other sellers may not possess, or they may need to focus on improving these skills. Ultimately, a modern seller is someone who truly differentiates themselves and stands out for their clients.

The best sellers out there cannot be separated from their product or service because they are a crucial factor in the equation of their client’s success.

Business acumen is essential to connect with clients and demonstrate the value of your services or products in addressing their individual and unique business challenges, issues, and opportunities.

In longer cycle sales, where the complexity is higher, simply providing a standardized proposal deck is not be enough to stand out. Instead, you need to be able to build a bullet proof business case that clearly demonstrates ROI. This requires the ability to show the actual outcomes that the client can expect by implementing your service or product, and how it will impact their business.

If you excel at building relationships and connecting with people, but are unable to articulate how you can help their business, build a compelling business case, or provide guidance in finding an alternative path, then your efforts will be in vain.

The Effectiveness Quotient Is A Game Changer

Being able to build relationships while also having a high IQ about your client’s industry and their specific business is crucial. In addition to having a high IQ and emotional intelligence, understanding your clients’ industry and business, there is also the value of a high effectiveness quotient.

Being effective means analyzing the tactics that you use in your sales week and determining exactly how they help your clients.

One of the key differences between modern sellers and those who came before is their focus on both efficiency and effectiveness. They know how to achieve the greatest possible outcomes in the shortest amount of time possible.

How A High Technical Quotient Keeps You Agile

One of the reasons why modern sellers have a high TQ (technical quotient) is their ability to leverage technology and information. This allows them to spend more time with people and be more efficient with their time. They adopt and adapt technology to their particular situation, while still prioritizing the human-to-human connection that is essential in sales.

What separates the highest performing salespeople from other sellers is the ability to use technology effectively and use the right tools to take their performance to the next level. Embracing technology and the right tools can move you from being an A player to a top performer. Remember that though technology is advancing at a rapid pace, it should never overshadow the importance of the human element in sales. Customers buy the salesperson first, then the product or service.

2 Ways You Can Get Ahead In Today’s World

First, take a look at your relationship with your direct manager and leadership team. Do you have a healthy and connected relationship with them? By building strong relationships with your leaders, they become more aware of your work and are less likely to be unaware of what you’re doing. This is one way to ensure good communication with your superiors.

Another important factor is developing effective habits and discipline in your daily routine. Are you focusing on the right strategic activities? If you are, and you track your progress as needed, your leadership will recognize your efforts, which can significantly contribute to exceeding your quota.

What It Takes To Be A Modern Seller

Being a modern seller requires discipline, good habits, and following a sales plan. These fundamentals will help you work towards achieving excellence. However, you must also have the internal drive and motivation to pursue excellence.

You must take ownership of your day, your sales life, and be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to be successful.

Working from home and being in front of clients is a privilege, and when you view it as such, along with your desire to be excellent, you will have the internal fire and motivation to do what needs to be done.

You can learn more about what it takes to be a modern seller, how to be more agile, and develop an entrepreneurial approach to selling in Amy Franko’s courses on Sales Gravy University.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

If You Don’t Take Action, You Won’t Get Results

In this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount and David Newman, author of Do It! Marketing and Do It! Selling, discuss exactly how to connect and engage with decision makers and avoid the “middle management trap”. One of the most effective approaches that salespeople can leverage to close bigger deals is using interviews as a sales strategy to gather intelligence, build relationships, and connect with high-level decision makers. Through asking penetrating questions and providing valuable resources, consultants and salespeople can establish themselves as experts and earn the right to have pivotal conversations with their top prospects.

• Strategic planning and research are paramount for sales and marketing professionals, including targeting a specific market, establishing credibility, using interviews as a prospecting channel, and planning for the future.
• Target a specific market instead of trying to target everyone. Determine where to publish, speak, network, post, and participate in blogs, portals, forums, and communities to reach this audience.
• Establish credibility in one industry before expanding into others. This requires deep-dive research on market forces, disruption, and compliance regulations. When you track where the money is going, you can prepare for unexpected events and pivot when necessary.
• Using interviews as a prospecting channel to gather intelligence, build relationships, and connect with high-level decision makers. focusing on providing value rather than seeking approval or sounding smart during conversations with economic buyers.
• To plan for the future, dedicate time to strategic planning based on research, conversations, and feedback from past clients. It’s important to always have a plan B in place and be ready to shift gears and change direction when necessary.
• By focusing on specific markets, establishing credibility, and using interviews as a prospecting channel, professionals can connect with high-level decision makers and achieve their business goals.

To Sell, You Have to Take Action

As a sales professional, you face a simple choice.

Stay put or go out and do something. Believing that “if you build it, they will come” is a fallacy.

Planning is essential, but without conversations, it won’t lead to success. It’s time to take action and start having those conversations.

Shake hands and create familiarity with your voice, face, and message. This way, when people see you, they will recognize you and remember your message. This is where serendipity happens.

The key message of David’s new book, Do It! Selling is that without action, there will be no results. Leads do not come out of the blue. Sometimes these leads may seem serendipitous, but they actually result from the actions you take to create an environment conducive to generating leads.

If you consistently put in effort, the universe has a way of rewarding you, but it won’t reward you for simply waiting for success to come to you. Waiting around for leads to come to you is a reactive approach.

Instead, you need to be proactive and actively seek fresh targets on a regular basis.

The 3 PR Game Plan: Personalized, Professional, Public Relations

For those who are a bit reluctant to sell, David presents a new definition for sales: ‘Are you sending enough invitations to a conversation with enough of the right people about how you can help them?’ This conversation may not always lead to a commercial relationship, but results in an introduction or referral.

Sometimes, the person may not be the right fit at the moment, but they may come back in the future with an opportunity to work together. Therefore, it’s important to put fresh prospects on your radar daily by sending enough invitations to a conversation with real people whom you can help, with the intention of opening a conversation and seeing where it goes.

Enter the Three P. R. Game Plan, which stands for Personalized, Professional, Public Relations. This is not the same as traditional public relations involving press releases and media interviews. Instead, it consists of three components: speaking, publishing, and social media.

Speaking

Speaking is the first leg of the Three P. R. strategy, which involves generating leads and sales through speaking engagements. This can include speaking in person to groups, participating in podcasts, live streaming, or creating short video emails to send to prospects.

Publishing

This doesn’t mean publishing a book, but rather creating articles, blogs, cheat sheets, and other content that is relevant and valuable to your target market. These pieces help establish credibility and expertise.

Social Media

Being active on online platforms where your target market is already engaging helps raise your visibility and shareability. This can include social media platforms, blogs, portals, communities, and forums.

By implementing the Three P. R. strategy, you can generate more leads and increase your visibility, credibility, and shareability. Remember, it’s important to put fresh targets on your radar every day to keep the momentum going.

Targeting Your Ideal Qualified Prospect (IQP)

Every salesperson, whether you are a consultant, solopreneur, or work for a big company, faces the challenge of identifying their target audience and the different layers of people to target within that audience. we are living in a time of insane volatility and uncertainty, so The target audience is constantly moving and changing. Your ideal qualified prospect (IQP) is not static. Finding the money is a problem in a world where everything is changing.

Here are three frameworks you use to identify where the money is in a changing landscape.

1. You need to define the niche or target market that you want to focus on. The mistake many people make is trying to target everyone, assuming that everyone needs their product or service. However, not everyone has the need or resources to purchase your product or service. If you zero in on exactly the right people that you want to serve, where you have some track records, experience, and expertise, you will have a high degree of confidence that you can help them. This makes your life so much easier because you know where to speak, where to network, and where to build relationships.
2. To build a universe of influence, it’s essential to focus on a narrow and deep market. Establish credibility in one industry, then expand into adjacent or different markets. If you keep working with a variety of customers and clients, you’ll never gain momentum or a track record within a specific industry. Without a track record, repeat business, referrals, upselling, and cross-selling become impossible.
3. To get started, consider where you’ve done your best work and who you can help the most. Identify the people who have given you the most significant results and gather testimonials, testimonial clips, and testimonial videos. These individuals are your target audience, and you should focus your efforts on them. Determine where to publish, speak, network, post, and participate in blogs, portals, forums, and communities to reach this audience. Once you’ve established yourself, the snowball effect will kick in, and you won’t need to bounce from one market or target group to another constantly.

It’s Simple Economics

As you go through this process, keep in mind that not only must your prospects have the ability to pay, but they must also be eager to pay for our services. It’s not enough that they have a budget; they must have an urgent, pervasive, and expensive problem that they are willing to pay a premium fee to solve.

This is why it is crucial to choose a target market with financial viability. Otherwise, we may waste our time talking to people who desperately need our services but cannot afford them.

Using Interviews As A Sales Strategy

Did you know that you can use interviewing as a prospecting channel, especially when you want to meet people in the C suite?

The goal is to gather intelligence, build relationships, and connect with high-level C-suite executives whom you might not be able to reach otherwise. These individuals are often behind multiple layers of security, and their emails and phone calls are screened.

During the interview, start by asking about their biggest successes. Focus on the positive at first to build trust and rapport before moving on to more difficult topics. Ask about their unique insights or nuggets of information that only they know, and the best advice they’ve received on the topic. Then, transition to their next goals and challenges, asking what they’re currently working on and what obstacles they’re facing.

Follow-Up Is Where The Magic Happens

The magic of the interview is not in the interview itself or even the publishing of the interview. It’s in the follow-up touch points after the interview. This includes sending a handwritten thank-you note, an email with the finished article, and giving the interviewee the opportunity to make any changes or updates to the article.

Make sure to follow up every 7 to 10 days, continuing to offer helpful information and solutions to their challenges. By the sixth or seventh touchpoint, you will have positioned yourself as an expert and authority in your industry and earned the right to have a pivotal conversation with them. For example, you could say, “Hey Jeb, we’ve been talking a lot about your challenges with problem A, problem B, and problem C. I believe I can help you in a more formal manner. Would a short chat be worth your time?” Often, the answer will be yes.

Even if it doesn’t pay off immediately, the person you interviewed will never forget that you thought their perspective was important, and they may loop back around to you in the future.

Want to learn more about targeting your idea qualified prospects and connecting with hard to reach stakeholders? You’ll find more than 1000 hours of professional development content for modern sales professionals and leaders on Sales Gravy University.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Mastermind Group Incredible Asks Jeb Blount Their Toughest Sales Questions

In this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Mastermind Group Incredible asks Jeb Blount their real-life questions as he provides solutions to overcome their toughest sales challenges. Some of their questions include: standing out in a final round interview process, targeting and selling into larger accounts, losing to a competitor, and ways to contact hard-to-reach stakeholders on LinkedIn. Whether you’re a solopreneur, small business owner, sales professional, you’ll take away powerful strategies to advance your career, grow your business, or land your dream account.

• Small companies lose customers because they take them for granted and don’t address their concerns.
• To win big deals, put a wedge between the incumbent vendor and the customer and look for issues that can be addressed.
• Personalized service and attention are selling points for small companies managing accounts with larger competitors.
• The hardest thing to do when scaling a business is moving from where you are to the next place.
• To get big accounts, create a list of 10-25 dream accounts and target them specifically.
• When using LinkedIn, sending a voice message or using Vidyard for video messages can be effective.
• Layering on other parts of a messaging sequence, such as phone calls or handwritten notes, can increase effectiveness.
• Chat GPT can be a useful tool for writing proposals and creating sales messages, but it can also degrade the quality of written communication if used lazily.

Q: How Do I Stand Out In The Final Round Of The Interview Process?

To leave a lasting impression during a presentation in your final round of interviews, use a strategic approach. A useful tactic is to speak last, also known as the availability bias.

In a final presentation interview, demonstrating ROI is crucial, especially in today’s economy. Use a business case to showcase the value you bring. Start by discussing what you discovered during the discovery phase, the problems you faced, and the future state after your program is implemented. Highlight values that are important to individual stakeholders, like personal outcomes and emotional outcomes such as peace of mind and trust in the vendor. Be sure to make your case using business language, not just marketing brochures, and support it with math.

To provide a value framework, follow these steps: articulate the problem you discovered, make a recommendation to solve it, and describe the outcomes your recommendation will generate in terms of measurable business outcomes, personal outcomes, and emotional outcomes. Use the audience’s language and be specific. By following this structure, you’ll help the audience absorb information more effectively.

Q: How Do I start Targeting Larger Accounts?

Scaling up into larger businesses can be overwhelming, but the first step is to take action. While hitting singles may be easier, it’s important to pursue bigger opportunities to gain experience selling larger deals.

However, it’s also important to not overlook the value of smaller deals and to have a consistent pipeline of singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. This helps de-risk your pipeline and income while providing opportunities for growth and a bigger income.

To reduce risk in your pipeline, it’s crucial to have strong qualifying mechanisms and a solid understanding of a potential client’s fit with your company. Identifying decision-making roles and stakeholders is also essential.

When pursuing a deal, it’s important to build an unassailable business case for why your company is the right choice. This involves mapping out every detail and identifying potential challenges and solutions.

Finally, use murder boarding to identify potential obstacles and develop strategies to overcome them. By the time of the final presentation, you should feel confident that the client has already made the decision to do business with you.

In summary, take action, carefully qualify leads, and focus on strategy for each deal. Surround yourself with knowledgeable individuals who can assist with awareness and strategy. With the right deals in your pipeline and discipline to work your strategy, success is achievable.

Q: Why Did We Lose To A Competitor?

Small companies often lose customers because they don’t value them enough. In fact, studies show that 70% of the time, when a loyal customer switches to another business, it’s because they felt unappreciated. Competitors use this as an opportunity to ask the right questions and find weaknesses in your business.

If they discover mistakes or billing issues, the buyer may become defensive and turn to the competition. As a smaller company, it can be difficult to save the deal when you have limited resources and other priorities. Meanwhile, the competitor has already done the math and convinced the stakeholder group to switch.

To win big deals, you need to create distance between the customer and the incumbent vendor. I recommend taking a course on Sales Group University called “competitive displacement selling” for guidance on how to do this. Start by assessing the strength of the incumbent vendor and look for ways to highlight any issues or concerns.

Personalized service is a selling point for small companies, especially when competing against larger competitors. However, don’t take your customers for granted. There are always salespeople waiting for you to slip up. Stay in touch with your customers, even if it’s just once a month, to show them that you care. If you do make mistakes, apologize and be patient. It may take time to earn back their trust.

Q: How Do I Get In Touch With A Hard-To-Reach Stakeholder? Video Will Help You Stand Out From The Crowd

If you want to connect with a stakeholder and are struggling to capture their attention, there are a few steps you can take that will help you stand out. First, create a short video that explains how your skills or services can help them achieve their business goals.

You can upload the video directly to LinkedIn.

CEOs are primarily interested in making money, so be sure to emphasize how your approach can help them get from point A to point B.

Snail Mail Still Works

Next, follow up with a handwritten letter to their office.

Reiterate the same points you made in the video in a letter format. Put the letter in an envelope, add postage, and send it. To make it more impactful, consider using an overnight mail service like FedEx.

This way, when the CEO receives the envelope and sees that it’s important, they are more likely to read it. Handwritten notes are affordable and effective, so it’s worth incorporating them into your outreach strategy.

Focus On Building A Relationship Over Time

Avoid sending LinkedIn messages too frequently, but give yourself a year to engage with this person, as relationship-building is a long-term effort. Keep trying until you receive a definitive “no.”

Remember, circumstances can change, and they may need your services in the future. If that happens, it would be a significant win for you and worth the effort.

Hone Your Messaging With A Value Bridge

Another thing to keep in mind is the importance of checking your message.

If you’re not getting any engagement despite sending lots of content, people may lose interest. To grab their attention, start by showing that you can relate to them. Instead of beginning with something like, “Hey, I want to talk to you because…”, try starting with something like, “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be the CEO of a software company in today’s world, where it’s hard to find people who can code at a high level.”

This approach instantly captures their attention and shows that you’re thinking about their specific situation.

After you’ve established a connection, make a value bridge that connects the problem or issue to how you can help them. For instance, you could say something like, “Here’s what I do in this situation – I help companies with this. I don’t know whether or not I’m a fit for you, but wouldn’t it at least make sense for us to get together so I can ask a few questions and learn more about you to see if it makes sense for us to keep talking?”

Leverage An Omni-Channel Approach With High Priority Accounts

Keep your goals in mind as you prioritize your outreach efforts. Identify a list of 10 to 25 dream accounts, which are your top priority prospects. Share this list with your team and start targeting them with a variety of tactics, such as monthly mailings. Adjust your plan every year as you learn what works and what doesn’t. It’s impossible to maintain the same level of intensity with every opportunity, so it’s essential to set priorities.

Consider incorporating other parts of the sequence, such as phone, voice, video, and written messages in addition to LinkedIn. Handwritten notes or in-person meetings can also be effective, especially if the people you’re reaching out to are local. In-person prospecting is making a comeback and people are generally receptive to it.

Join A Sales Gravy Mastermind Group

A Mastermind Group is a peer-to-peer mentoring group where individuals come together to help each other solve their problems and improve their lives or businesses. It is a powerful tool for personal and professional growth.

Sales Gravy Mastermind Groups are an excellent way to improve your sales skills, become a more effective leader, or solve problems. Our masterminds are facilitated by a Master Sales Trainer and include additional training resources to build on group discussions. You can learn more about Mastermind Groups and how they can help you reach your goals here.

Looking to go beyond a mastermind group and get one-to-one personalized coaching? Well, we have a free guide to help you identify the right coach for you. Download HERE

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Curiosity Is Your Key To Effective Cold Calling

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Ulysses Price, filling in for Jeb Blount, interviews Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell. ConnectAndSell is a software service that helps salespeople initiate conversations with prospects. Beall explains how market dominance and the humble cold call are connected. His prospecting philosophy requires the salesperson to build trust and demonstrate curiosity, master the first few seconds of the conversation to create emotional buy-in, and avoid triggering psychological reactance. By breaking down the conversation and practicing each part in training, sales reps can improve their skills and conduct more successful sales conversations.

• Chris Beall connected the dots between market dominance and the potential impact of a humble cold call.
• Calibrated callers are comfortable using a psychological framework, playful curiosity, and confidence to create a clean read from potential customers and insist on a meeting.
• The seven-second rule is a technique for building trust in a cold call by demonstrating tactical empathy and competence to solve the problem of the caller being an interruption.
• The risk of B2B sales is a career risk, not a financial risk. B2B salespeople are necessary because buyers risk their careers when making buying decisions.
• Salespeople must gain the trust of potential customers to become the expert and be on their side.
• Sales reps must be able to make a clean read of a potential customer, understand their needs and interests, and provide value.
• Handle objections in a delicate and curious manner, stick to your guns, and position yourself as an expert to establish trust quickly.

Gain Your Prospect’s Trust In Seven Seconds

Cold calling is still one of the most effective ways of reaching potential customers, but it can be a daunting task for many salespeople, especially when you don’t know where to start.

To start a conversation, we need to gain someone’s trust. Without trust, they won’t listen to us, and we won’t get far. When we make a cold call, the person we’re speaking with only wants to end the conversation while keeping their self-image intact. If they didn’t care about their self-image, they would just hang up. So we have a small window of opportunity to gain their trust— just seven seconds.

In those seven seconds is to help the other party see that we see the world through their eyes. We call it tactical empathy. Secondly, we need to demonstrate to them that we’re competent in solving a problem they have right now. Their problem could be me, but I can always offer to go away in exchange for something.

You want them to listen to you, so you make that offer. For example, you might open the call with a statement like:

“I know I’m an interruption. Can I take 27 seconds to tell you why I called?”

By saying this, you’re self-indicting right at the beginning. That’s what the other party is already thinking about you. You beat them to the punch. As a seller, it’s essential to establish trust with your audience, especially in B2B sales. Eventually, they have to trust you more than they trust themselves and view you as the expert. This is why the first seven seconds are crucial in establishing trust with your audience. Do it wisely, and they will trust you forever, but try selling to them, and you’ll lose their trust in an instant.

Then comes the pitch:

“We’ve made a breakthrough that eliminates the waste and frustration that hinder your best sales reps from being effective on the phone. My call today is to request 15 minutes of your time to share this with you. Do you have your calendar handy?”

Sounds easy, right? But it’s not. The waste is economic, and the frustration is emotional. That’s because frustration triggers the part of our brain that causes us to lash out. Be careful not to trigger anger and instead, use a tone of voice that shows you understand what frustration means.

You want to connect with your listener on an emotional level and build trust. Remember, your voice is more important than your words. Use it skillfully to deliver emotional information and show that you truly get them, their needs, and their challenges and want to help solve them together.

What Is A Calibrated Caller?

There are two things that make a calibrated caller. First, they become very comfortable using a psychological framework, which I’ll call a script framework. They get good at it and become comfortable with it.

The framework consists of several steps: throwing yourself under the bus, making your voice playful, leading with curiosity instead of value, and insisting that the person take the meeting.

The reps are trained to lead with value, but the resonance comes from leading with curiosity to see if somebody is curious enough to take a meeting. Insisting that the person take the meeting requires a kind of confidence and belief in the value of the meeting, which isn’t equal across all reps. You need somebody who can do the whole thing, who can throw themselves under the bus, make their voice playful, go to curiosity, and insist they take the meeting.

A calibrated caller is somebody who has proven they can do all of that work in a cold call, which we call an ambush call, and they can do it in any topic or product area. They’re not dependent on the message, just a belief in the potential value of the meeting for the person they’re talking with.

Live Calling Is The Best Way To Practice

Learning to cold call can be really challenging. Cold calling is associated with several issues. One of the problems is that until you can use your voice effectively under pressure, it can be problematic. People on the other end can detect insincerity and uncertainty in the same way that wolves can smell fear. Therefore, it’s essential to overcome this hurdle.

How can you do it? By practicing under pressure. Live calling is an excellent way to practice. It’s also important to keep the cycle time of practice in mind. Here are the four steps to learning how to make effective cold calls that convert.

Learn How to Make Effective Cold Calls In 4 Steps

The first stage is getting the opener right. This is where the seller needs to grab the prospect’s attention within the first few seconds of the call. Using a playful, curious tone encourages the prospect to want to hear more.

The second stage is getting the curiosity message out. This is where the seller needs to pique the prospect’s interest and make them curious about what the seller has to offer. Using a storytelling approach will help you to build a narrative that will engage the prospect and make them want to learn more.

The third stage is learning how to handle objections. As you well know, the best objection is the one you don’t get in the first place. Avoid objections by staying away from value-based statements that could make the prospect feel like they are not doing their job well. Instead, he suggests using a curiosity-based approach that focuses on the prospect’s needs and pain points.

The fourth stage is asking for the meeting and sticking to your guns. This is where the seller needs to be confident in the value of the meeting they are offering. They need to deeply believe that the meeting will provide potential value to the prospect, even if they never do business together. By sticking to their guns and asking for the meeting, the seller can build trust with the prospect and establish a relationship that could lead to future business opportunities.

This approach to cold calling focuses on building trust with the prospect and understanding their needs. By using a curiosity framework and deeply believing in the potential value of the meeting being offered, salespeople can master the art of cold calling and achieve great success in sales.

Always Lead With Curiosity

Mastering cold calling requires a well-thought-out approach that takes into account the prospect’s needs and unique challenges. According to Chris Beall, the purpose of a cold call is to establish trust with the prospect. This can be achieved by using a curiosity framework to build a narrative that will engage the prospect and make them want to learn more.

By following the four-stage process outlined by Beall, salespeople can master the art of cold calling and achieve great success in sales. The first stage is getting the opener right, followed by getting the curiosity message out, learning how to handle objections, and finally, asking for the meeting and sticking to your guns. By using a curiosity-based approach and deeply believing in the potential value of the meeting being offered, salespeople can build trust with their prospects and establish a relationship that could lead to future business opportunities.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Building and Leading a Successful Sales Team

On this episode of the podcast, Allison Walsh, Vice President of Business Development and Branding for Advanced Recovery Systems, a national behavioral healthcare company, discusses her experience in building and leading a successful sales team. Starting as the second employee of the company, she has been instrumental in its growth to a team of a thousand and counting. The organization offers inpatient substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, and a mental wellness application called Nobu. Walsh shares insights on the importance of trust, relationships, and professional development in nurturing and retaining sales talent, as well as the challenges and opportunities of pivoting to virtual selling during the pandemic.

• Allison shares her experience of nurturing and developing sales talent, and her journey as a young leader managing more experienced team members.
• Trust, relationships, and professional development are instrumental in nurturing and retaining sales talent.
• Focus on personal and professional development instead of financial incentives. Showing extreme compassion and support for your team pays off in the long run for both company culture and retention.
• Create other career pathways for people to develop personally and professionally, even if they don’t want the responsibility of managing humans.
• Motions that leaders do to create relationship and trust with their people are the same behaviors that salespeople can emulate to build relationship and trust with their prospects.
• Allison shares how her organization pivoted to virtual selling during the pandemic and invested in video technology to communicate with their partners for a blended approach to sales.
• Discover the power of seeing, valuing, and hearing every employee and looking at the world from the perspective of “everybody matters.”

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Sales Training Is An Investment In YOU

In this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount is joined by Sarah Browner, the Global Sales Enablement Manager at Adobe. If you are a sales leader, sales enablement professional, or training facilitator, you will want to tune in for their conversation about keeping learners engaged and using feedback to improve enablement initiatives.

As for salespeople, you’ll find out why it’s critical to continue advancing your skills and investing in yourself throughout your sales career.

• Sales enablement is a critical investment for companies looking to increase sales.
• Sales skills, particularly soft skills, are perishable and need to be continuously developed.
• Taking advantage of free training opportunities is crucial for personal and professional development.
• Learning is never wasted, and even reviewing familiar concepts can provide new perspectives.
• Leaders and trainers should give learners options and ask for feedback to keep them engaged.
• Meeting learners where they are means providing information in a modality that works best for them.

Increase Skills to Increase Sales

As part of Sarah’s role, she is responsible for curating enablement for over 2000 individual contributing sales reps for Adobe, globally. She either finds or creates the information that their sales reps need to perform their jobs more effectively.

Adobe, like hundreds of other companies that we work with at Sales Gravy, invest in sales enablement and training for one simple reason— to increase sales, sellers need to continually increase their skillset.

Why Invest In Sales Enablement?

Sales training and enablement isn’t just for new hires. Salespeople must not only master the basics and fundamentals of selling, but in order to see continued success and growth, it is crucial that they advance their skills— long after the onboarding process has concluded.

One of the frustrations that sales enablement leaders face is hearing dissent from salespeople who think they know everything and don’t need to learn more.

This way of thinking is dangerous. Sales as a profession is changing constantly, especially with the never-ending advances in technology.

To make your number and stay ahead, you need to be adept with these new technologies and always be looking for opportunities to expand your knowledge when it comes to your product, your competition, and the selling tools at your disposal.

There Is No Unused Learning

You might be instructed or advised to join a team-wide training session or read a book as part of a team book club. And you might think, “There’s nothing new here.”

The truth is, this cynicism is holding you back. Almost everything we learn, everything that’s presented to us, someone has already thought of.

The important part of taking in information, even if it’s something you knew already, is the chance to reconfigure your thinking. In sales, we apply the fundamental basics of how we interact with people, from soft skills to how we develop our products, to different contexts and circumstances.

Products, services, and software change, and we must learn to navigate those changes out of necessity. In training, you might learn a concept or hear a practical piece of advice you’ve heard before, but you can get a new perspective on existing knowledge because it’s presented or applied in a different context.

Learning is never wasted.

Never Turn Down Free Training

Your company likely provides training opportunities, so it’s wise to take advantage of them.

Workshops, even virtual ones, are delivered in a live format and watching a recording won’t provide the same benefit. Attending training sessions live or in person allows you to learn from your coworkers, share ideas, and expand your way of thinking.

Investing in your education and training is important, because it makes a difference. At Sales Gravy University, we have 30,000 users, most of whom work for small companies that typically don’t have a significant training budget.

These users are paying their way to get educated because they believe in the value of training.

If you work for a larger company that pays for training, it’s already provided for you.

It’s free, so why not take it?

Even when you’re looking for a new job and a potential employer asks, “What have you done to advance your career?” answering “nothing” because you haven’t taken advantage of available training opportunities seems like a waste of time and effort for everyone, especially in sales.

If you’re not improving, you’re wasting your time and effort. Passing on the opportunity to take company-provided training is self-destructive. So why not make the effort to improve yourself and your own personal bottom line?

Sales Skills Are Perishable

Investing in yourself is crucial because sales skills, especially soft skills, can deteriorate over time. Selling involves doing discovery, interacting with people, asking questions, dealing with rejection, handling objections, sales strategy, and adapting to change, all of which are perishable skills.

Bad habits can develop, and even subtle changes can have an impact. Most sales training is designed to help you get back to the basics. If you work for a company like Adobe, where innovation and software changes happen frequently, knowing their products inside and out is essential.

To effectively engage with your customers, you must be able to ask meaningful questions, understand what matters to them, and demonstrate how your solution aligns with their desired outcomes. Without knowledge of the product, your learning and expertise will be useless.

Even if you have a deep understanding of the product, if you are unable to communicate its value to others, your knowledge will be wasted. It’s essential to know how to effectively communicate the information to others, as that is ultimately your job.

How To Help Salespeople Develop The Right Learning Mindset

It’s the responsibility of sales leaders, trainers, and enablement professionals to help salespeople build and maintain an open mindset towards continuing their learning.

One of the best ways to approach this, especially for individuals who are particularly hesitant or even resistant to attending or participating in training, is by giving them options. Not everyone is going to have a naturally instilled drive to take every opportunity to learn something new and expand their skills.

Truly meeting learners where they are means giving them the information in a modality that is most conducive to their preferred learning style, whether it’s through a podcast, a book, or in-person training.

At scale, this could mean implementing a system where learners can subscribe to a class of their choosing, enroll, and stack and blend training in different ways. No matter how they want to consume the training, there’s something for everyone.

Leaders And Facilitators— Ask For Feedback!

To keep learners engaged in the classroom, they need to receive the kind of training and facilitation that works best for them. The only way to know what is working for some people and not working for others, is by asking for feedback.

You or your organization may already do this in the form of surveys and assessments. These are a couple of examples of feedback in practice. However, this might prompt mostly negative reactions and comments that aren’t necessarily productive.

If people don’t tell you what’s working for them, you won’t know. Instead of fielding complaints about why your salespeople “hate” being in training, studying materials, or taking assigned courses, ask them what they want to see more of. Ask learners what they like, or what their preferences are.

Perhaps the content is rich, but too overwhelming and they would like shorter, video-based content because they learn better visually.

Or for some learners, a workshop session would be more helpful for a chance to role play or ask questions in real time.

Take this feedback with a grain of salt, but by opening the door to feedback, you will discover whether you’re meeting your audience’s learning preferences, and if not— how to get there.

The innovative Sales Gravy University sales training platform gives on the go individuals and entire teams easy, affordable access to the world’s top sales trainers in both live and on-demand courses. Now you can learn how to win in sales anywhere, anytime, and on any device. 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Emotional Intelligence Is A Sales Superpower

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount sits down with Robin Hills, a business psychologist and expert in emotional intelligence from the UK.

• Emotional intelligence is the ability to combine thinking and feelings to make good decisions and build high-quality relationships.
• Emotional resilience is essential in sales, and it involves understanding and managing your own emotions to influence the emotions of others.
• Mental resilience is also important in sales, and it involves having a clear vision of what you want to achieve, being flexible and adaptable, and having a support network.
• Emotional resilience involves having a clear understanding of realistic optimism, which means having a clear vision of what you want to achieve, what outcomes you are looking for, and understanding that there is meaning in what you’re doing.
• It’s important to have a support network of people you can turn to for help, and to establish a relationship of trust with your manager.
• It’s important to interrupt negative self-talk and replace it with something positive, such as listening to a podcast or reading a book.
• Complaining can turn a support group into a negative space, and it’s important to have constructive conversations and avoid cynicism.

Emotional intelligence is a concept that Daniel Goleman launched and popularized approximately 30 years ago.

Robin began his career in sales in the 1980s and has been selling consistently ever since. Although he no longer holds the title of salesperson, he proudly wore that badge for well over a quarter of a century.

Today, Robin’s company Ei4Change (Emotional Intelligence 4 Change) coaches and trains individuals and organizations on emotional intelligence, positive psychology, and neuroscience in the workplace.

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to combine your thinking with your feelings in order to build high-quality relationships and make authentic decisions. While it is a simple concept, it can be difficult to execute, particularly in situations with intense emotions or pressure.

Relationships and decision-making play a crucial role in this process. It is essential to have high-quality relationships with people you can turn to and say, “Hey, I’m having a bad day. Can we talk about something other than work? Or do something together that can take my mind off things and help me get back to it tomorrow?” This allows you to step away from the situation and take a break.

Salespeople, in general, are mentally resilient and must demonstrate high levels of emotional intelligence in order to be effective.

Field-based salespeople, who may not work in an office, often need to motivate themselves and have an inner drive to sell to their clients.

Salespeople handle a lot from customers and clients, and have good and bad days like everyone else. Emotional intelligence in sales involves understanding and managing your own emotions to influence the emotions of others.

You Choose How You React to Your Emotions

Emotions are a natural reaction to our environment, and we cannot control their occurrence. However, we can choose how we respond to them.

Emotions prepare our body mentally and physically for events, and the intensity of emotions compounds with each event. At a certain point, emotions can become so intense that making a simple, effective choice becomes difficult.

Experiencing fear, for example, is not something that we can control or prevent.

In such moments, we are faced with a choice: do we react irrationally to our fear and potentially put ourselves in danger, or do we use the presence of our emotions as information to assist us in productive, clear decision-making?

We can choose to become immobilized, paralyzed, or act out in self-destructive ways. and we can choose to handle our emotions, turn them into something constructive, and create positive outcomes.

This is where mental resilience comes into play. When under pressure and stress, mental resilience — the ability to go from setback to comeback — becomes essential.

Why Having A Support Network Is Crucial

Having the right relationships and support network is crucial, especially in sales when you are faced with difficult emotions like rejection, fear, and stress every day. When you need help, don’t hesitate to turn to your network for support.

It’s also important to establish a relationship of trust with your manager during good times, so that you can have a discussion about handling challenges when necessary.

In general, opening up to someone about a problem you are dealing with can be helpful. You may have heard the oft-quoted saying, “A problem shared is a problem halved.”

Consider talking to your spouse, friends, or colleagues at work. Who in your network can provide support for you when you need it? Who can you provide support to in return?

Think Before You Complain

Having a support group of people to talk to is a great idea. It gives you a much needed space to have cathartic conversations because sometimes, it’s crucial to vent and express frustrations.

Unfortunately, it’s easy for these groups to turn into complaining sessions rather than support groups. Complaining is like misery’s mating call. The more you complain, the more negative you become, and misery loves company.

This is especially true on sales floors, where people can start to believe that all buyers are liars, leading to poor decisions in the sales process and more misery.

When bad things happen, it’s important to talk about it and not hold onto it. However, it’s equally important to have constructive conversations about what happened and what the next steps should be. Know when to draw the line and redirect the conversation towards something positive.

Don’t Allow Cynicism to Destroy Your Faith

This is why you should turn to the people in your support network who can help you make good decisions, such as your manager who can remind you of your strengths as a salesperson.

Don’t allow cynicism to destroy your faith in the systems and processes that, statistically speaking, will result in more wins than losses if executed consistently.

We should view our emotions as something to be handled intelligently in order to build quality relationships and make authentic decisions.

If you have a bad sales day, have coping mechanisms and practice in place to help rebuild your confidence so that you can make the next sale effectively.

Remember that you wouldn’t have the job if you weren’t good at what you do.

Reflect on what made you successful and identify how you can replicate that success. These are questions that only you can answer, but you can also seek support from people who can offer you the right guidance and encouragement.

Manage Your Internal Messages

When faced with a problem, our internal voice can start chattering away, often negatively, which can have a massive impact on our ability to stage a comeback.

Affirmations may seem metaphysical to some people, but the important thing is to interrupt negative self-talk.

Sometimes, you just have to accept that there will be times when you need to take a break. There may be nothing anyone can do or say. You just have to make the decision that enough is enough and get away from the situation.

Other times, you may need to force yourself to keep going because you need to prove to yourself that you can do it and you’re strong enough to deal with the circumstances.

In sales conversations and situations, the person who exerts the most emotional resilience usually has the highest probability of achieving their desired outcome.

A breakdown in emotional resilience when things go wrong, or when you perceive that they are going wrong, can seriously impact your ability to make an income.

Always Replace The Negative With A Positive

Sometimes, when you are stuck in a negative headspace, it can help to say something nice to somebody. You have to change the words that you are saying and hearing in order to fix the little messages you are telling yourself internally.

If you don’t manage that internal message, the words you say to yourself could be your worst enemy. They can break down your resilience and tear it apart more than anything else.

Replacing your negative inputs with positive outputs can help you disrupt any spiraling and get you back on track, using your emotions in a constructive way.

Jeb Blount’s bestselling book Sales EQ: How Ultra High Performers Leverage Sales-Specific Emotional Intelligence to Close the Complex Deal helps guide salespeople through the many hurdles that many struggle with in building authentic relationships with prospects. Download our free Sales EQ Book Club Guide HERE.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Great Sales Messaging Isn’t Rocket Science

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jim Karrh, Ph.D. and Jeb Blount discuss the essentials of sales messaging, how poor communication skills damage your brand, the stories we tell ourselves and our prospective customers, and what the advent of automation tools like Chat GPT means for salespeople. You’ll learn how to translate marketing messages into effective sales conversations, whether in person, virtually, or over the phone.

•  Prioritize positioning and lead the conversation to close more deals
• CMOs and marketing teams must take ownership of the writing that their salespeople produce. This can be accomplished by incorporating writing development into sales training and coaching efforts
• Use empathy and insight to connect with prospects and ensure that you establish trust at the beginning of the sales conversation.
• Focus on the buyer’s problem and the urgency behind it, rather than just promoting the product’s features and benefits. Then, simplify messaging to get customers to say yes and move forward.
• Create a framework and sequence for conversations, especially in discovery and closing conversations.
• Use automation tools like Chat GPT to improve written communication, but remember that authenticity is key and phony, robotic messaging won’t close deals.

Strategic Messaging Is Crucial For Any Sales or Marketing Organization

In today’s market, it’s increasingly difficult to find and take full advantage of precious sales opportunities. That’s why it’s so important to prioritize positioning and lead the conversation to close more deals.

At the University of Alabama, Jim Karrh, Ph.D. teaches coursework around innovative marketing and sales messaging. His curriculum is informed by his background in B2B consulting and his previous experience as a CMO for a private company.

During his time as a CMO, Jim became frustrated with the sales team’s inability to effectively communicate the brand’s core messaging to both their direct sales team and independent distributors.

This experience led Jim to focus on bridging the gap between marketing and sales in his consulting work with B2B sales teams. Now, Jim uses his understanding of communication and psychology to help improve the practical day-to-day realities of salespeople and sales leaders.

Writing Ability Is Key For Clear Communication

Salespeople, even those with a college education, often face challenges with writing. If you’re a leader and observe this trend within your organization, rest assured you’re not alone. Nonetheless, writing and communication skills hold immense value and should be seamlessly integrated into your sales training and coaching efforts.

It’s common for individuals to believe they lack writing ability, but in roles like sales, management, or leadership, writing is an essential skill—and usually an untapped secret weapon.

Writing compels you to structure your ideas coherently, enhancing focus on essential aspects, connecting concepts, establishing sequence, refining structure, and avoiding unnecessary wordiness. This process instills discipline, thereby fostering improved thinking and communication. Sadly, it’s a rare skill and discipline in today’s professional landscape.

The importance of writing extends beyond mere formality; it reflects our value as professionals. Throughout the selling process and in the eyes of customers, how we sound and come across in writing can significantly influence judgments.

Teams often need to revisit this aspect as people may not possess the ability to write naturally due to a lack of prior teaching or experience. By addressing this deficit and incorporating writing development into training, individuals can unlock their full potential as effective communicators and salespeople.

Poor Written And Verbal Communication Is Killing Your Brand And Your Bottom Line

If you’re a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), your salespeople can damage your brand if you allow them to write poorly. The responsibility for this falls on you and your marketing organization. Marketing should not write everything for salespeople because that approach can be disastrous, but every time a salesperson interacts with a customer, they become the face of your brand, so it’s crucial that marketing monitors what salespeople write.

This is because writing can make or break a deal. Sales are often won or lost by a small margin, and emotions play a significant role in decision-making. If your writing is sloppy, you’ll put yourself in a position to lose the deal. This is no different from showing up to a meeting looking unprofessional.

If you’re a salesperson, leader, or trainer, you should spend time teaching people how to write for business.

Verbal communication is also crucial because you’ll be presenting to customers. However, in most cases, someone else will read your written proposals. This person may be in middle management or have to seek approval from someone else. If they can’t understand your writing, you’ll lose the deal.

CMOs and marketing teams must take ownership of the writing that their salespeople produce. By doing so, they can ensure that their brand is protected and that they have a better chance of winning deals. Salespeople, on the other hand, should focus on improving their writing skills to communicate effectively with customers.

Your Message Should Be Easily Translated

Whether it’s writing or speaking, it’s crucial to be clear and concise in your message. Salespeople, in particular, need to have well-structured messaging that not only gets the point across in the moment but can also be easily retold and shared with others.

Sales messaging needs to be tight and well-structured, as buying teams are generally larger and more complex than ever before. Your message needs to be memorable and easily translated for someone else when you’re not around. This is what sets you apart from the competition and establishes your identity as a problem solver.

Professionals communicate like human beings in an authentic conversation, walking the customer through how they will solve the problem and what the results will be. The ability to stand in front of another human being, tell a story, and connect with them on a personal level is a valuable skill for salespeople. However, relying too much on charisma can lead to suboptimal income and even harm your brand.

As a salesperson, you can control and manage what comes out of your mouth and what you write. It’s important to take the time to structure your message effectively, so it can be easily remembered and shared. This is what will ultimately set you apart and make you a successful problem solver.

How To Improve Your Sales Messaging For A Winning GTM Strategy

Regardless of whether you’re responsible for revenue, on the sales team, a frontline manager, an individual rep, or working on the marketing or product side of things, all those involved in messaging and driving sales face challenges.

Bringing together sales and marketing is consistently viewed as both a goal and a challenge. So what can we do about that? You mentioned the influence of chemicals in the brain and the importance of conversation structure. Let me unpack what you said.

As a training development company, you probably have a conversation with companies that fit your ideal customer profile. You know which companies will be most valuable to talk to, and you focus on those that are committed to developing their people and have a track record of doing so. This means you’re having the right conversation with the right kind of organization.

You also know that certain words can make a difference in that conversation, such as using “because,” “recommend,” and “options.” You’ve developed a discipline around the preparation and tactics of your message, including the stories you share, the questions you ask, and how you actively listen and reflect back to move the conversation forward.

All of this comes together to create a finely honed discipline that everyone in the company needs to think through to make great sales messages and tailored conversations that are memorable, distinctive, and likely to bring value. Over time, this kind of discipline becomes more natural, but it is not our natural state as humans. We are built for comfort and pleasure.

Human Brains Are Wired For Stories

The human brain is wired for stories and follows a pattern throughout history. This applies to sales and messaging too. There are different types of messaging, such as prospecting, creating interest, and getting to the next step. The goal is to create a picture that makes someone feel unique. Messaging also builds your business case, outlining the challenge, recommendation, and outcome.

When organizations don’t understand this, sales and marketing suffer. Simplify messaging to get customers to say yes and move forward. Understand messaging progression and how the human brain operates.

Establish trust at the beginning to get more time with the customer. Follow the hero’s journey pattern, showing the customer a better place. The challenge comes with multiple stakeholders, each with their own outcomes. Tell stories that connect with each stakeholder based on what’s important to them.

It’s important to simplify messaging and understand how the human brain operates to get customers to say yes and move forward. Our brains are not wired for selling conversations focused on the customer or prospect. We are wired for comfort and pleasure, and talking about ourselves. Understand the other person’s perspective based on research and work done. Use empathy and insight to connect with prospects.

Establish trustworthiness through empathy and expertise. Conversation is where empathy is demonstrated, and where language is learned to reflect back in messaging. Listening is vital to make people feel significant. Repeat back what they say in your messaging to make them feel understood and trust you.

How to Structure Your Sales Messaging

In the beginning of a sales conversation, sellers must establish a sense of urgency and determine a need for change. Once they are able to identify what needs to change for the prospect and why now is the right time, they should seek to discover why their product or solution is the right one and why their competitor is not a viable alternative.

However, many sales teams tend to answer that final “why me?” question first without connecting to the problem that the buyer has. This approach can be frustrating for the buyer because they don’t understand the value or use case of the product.

Creating a false sense of urgency, such as cutting prices, bundling products differently, or offering a limited-time offer only exacerbates this issue. It may draw in some buyers, but likely for the wrong reasons and they may not fully commit to the solution.

To avoid this, sales messaging should always focus on the buyer’s problem and the urgency behind it, rather than just promoting a product’s features and benefits.

Messaging Is a Team Effort Between Sales and Marketing

A structured process led by a leader is necessary for bringing together marketing and sales. This involves creating a framework and sequence for conversations, including the introductory, change, sense of urgency, differentiation, and closing conversations. It’s essential to have discipline in this process due to the turnover of people in sales organizations, role shifts, and territory changes.

Without the right structure, discipline, and practice, there won’t be any improvements as a team or as individuals. Therefore, it’s important to naturally develop a conversational pattern by going through the necessary discipline.

Start by relating to the person and building a bridge to their situation. For instance, for a business owner, it’s essential to take the time to understand who they are. Use a specific pattern of relating first, bridging, and then doing a takeaway. This process removes the reptile brain, which causes people to avoid risky situations.

The issue is not just asking about pain points or presenting a pre-packaged solution. You need to show that you can relate to your prospect’s situation without immediately imposing a product or solution.

How To Leverage Automation and AI Tools To Improve Your Sales Messages

Salespeople often struggle with writing, but there are tools available to help. GPT-3 and GPT-4 are examples of brand new tools that are hitting the market and can help you be a better version of yourself if you use them the right way. These tools work from a set of patterns and may not be able to provoke an emotion in readers. Therefore, it’s important to go back and check your work and ensure that your message is authentic, innovative, passionate, and empathetic.

While automation can be effective in raising the quality of writing, it falls short in terms of authenticity, passion, innovation, and empathy. It’s essential to use these tools to enhance your writing ability and become aware of your writing patterns. However, don’t rely solely on robots and make sure to add your own unique perspective and voice to your writing.

In the case of sales teams, Chat GPT can help you find industry patterns and common pain points. However, it’s crucial to remember that no automation can be authentic to you, and verbal communication still holds more value than written communication.

A pro tip for writing is to say the words out loud or have someone else say them to ensure that the writing sounds natural and conversational.

The innovative Sales Gravy University sales training platform gives on the go individuals and entire teams easy, affordable access to the world’s top sales trainers in both live and on-demand courses. Now you can learn how to win in sales anywhere, anytime, and on any device. 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Sales Mastermind Group “Awesome” asks Jeb Blount sales questions. If you’ve ever had a question you wanted to ask Jeb then you’ll love this episode. It’s free flowing, insightful, and informative.

There is so much to learn from this episode including:

– How to get more prospecting done in less time.

– Building targeted prospecting lists and leveraging social proof to get engagement.

– Keys to building better prospecting lists.

– How to be more confident with your messaging.

– How to be more consistent with Fanatical Prospecting Sequences.

The sales lessons you’ll learn in this episode are so powerful that you’ll want to listen to it multiple times and share it with your entire team.

Mastermind Groups: A Powerful Way to Start Selling and Leading Better

A Mastermind Group is a peer-to-peer mentoring group where individuals come together to help each other solve their problems and improve their lives or businesses.

Mastermind Groups are powerful tools for personal and professional growth. They can foster a sense of community and connection, help members overcome challenges, and facilitate significant progress towards their goals.

The concept was popularized by Napoleon Hill in his 1937 book “Think and Grow Rich” who believed that the collective intelligence of a group is far greater than the sum of its parts.

The members of a Mastermind Group are typically successful individuals who are motivated and dedicated to achieving their goals. They meet regularly (either in-person or virtually) to discuss their challenges, set goals, brainstorm ideas, and offer each other advice and support.

In a Mastermind Group, the focus is on collaboration, growth, and mutual support. Each member benefits from the wisdom, experiences, and perspectives of the others. This dynamic leads to fresh insights, new ideas, and powerful motivation. Participants can hold each other accountable for their goals, offer encouragement, and provide honest and constructive feedback.

A Mastermind Group can be focused on various topics, such as prospecting, time management, large account strategies, proposal and presentation skills, account management and retention, and more. They can be informal and self-organized or facilitated by a professional coach or mentor.

Sales Gravy Mastermind Groups are an excellent way to improve your sales skills, become a more effective leader, or solve problems. Our masterminds are facilitated by a Master Sales Trainer and include additional training resources to build on group discussions.

7 Reasons You Should Consider Joining a Mastermind Group

1. Knowledge Sharing: Mastermind groups can offer a wealth of shared experiences and insights. The diverse backgrounds and skill sets of the group can provide different perspectives on sales techniques, strategies, and approaches.
2. Networking Opportunities: Mastermind groups often bring together professionals from various industries, offering the opportunity to build a strong professional network. These relationships can lead to business partnerships, referrals, or other collaboration opportunities that can help grow your sales.
3. Problem Solving: You can bring your sales challenges to the group, and together, brainstorm and strategize solutions. The collective intelligence and creativity of the group can help you solve problems faster and more effectively than you might alone.
4. Accountability: Setting goals is easy, but maintaining momentum and staying accountable can be challenging. In a mastermind group, members help hold each other accountable, which can be very motivating and contribute to better sales results.
5. Emotional Support and Motivation: Sales can be a tough job with frequent rejections and setbacks. Being a part of a supportive group of peers who understand the challenges can provide emotional support, boost morale, and motivate you to keep going even during difficult times.
6. Professional Development: Many mastermind groups bring in experts for talks (like Jeb Blount) or workshops, or provide resources for learning. This can give you access to high-level professional development opportunities that can refine your sales skills and techniques.
7. Staying Current: In a rapidly evolving field like sales, it’s important to stay current with the latest trends, technologies, and methodologies. Being part of a mastermind group can help you stay up-to-date with the newest and most effective sales strategies, tools, and technologies.

In short, a Sales Mastermind Group, will help you gain a competitive edge, build your knowledge base, advance your skills, and build support network and accountability partners that will help you navigate the many ups and downs of a your sales career.

Looking to go beyond a mastermind group and get one-to-one personalized coaching? Well, we have a free guide to help you identify the right coach for you. Download HERE

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

When They Say No: Overcoming Rejection And Shifting Your Mindset

• Introduces Andrea and Richard’s new book, When They Say No, and provides valuable insights on overcoming rejection in sales.
• The fear of rejection has evolutionary roots, but it can be reframed to reach positive sales outcomes.
• Breaking the negative thought spiral that follows rejection is crucial and should be given due importance.
• The opening phase in sales, though often overlooked, holds significant value in establishing rapport and understanding customer needs.
• Learn practical strategies to effectively handle rejection and rewire the mindset for success.
• Salespeople should endeavor to embrace rejection as an opportunity for growth and relationship-building.
• When salespeople overcome the fear of rejection, they achieve lasting sales success.

Your Fear of “No” Is Holding You Back

Are you tired of feeling defeated by rejection in sales and find yourself avoiding potential opportunities because the fear of hearing “no” holds you back? It’s time to shift your mindset and embrace rejection as a stepping stone to success.

In this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, renowned sales experts Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz share valuable insights from their book When They Say No that will revolutionize your sales approach.

The Power of Reframing Rejection

Our fear of rejection is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history.

Throughout human evolution, being accepted by the tribe was crucial for survival. Rejection meant being cast out and left to fend for oneself, facing increased vulnerability to predators and the loss of the collective support and resources provided by the group.

Our brains developed a powerful instinct to avoid rejection at all costs.

However, the good news is that we possess the ability to hack our brains and change our perception of rejection. Instead of automatically equating rejection with death or social isolation, we can actively reframe our thoughts.

By recognizing that rejection in the modern world does not carry the same life-or-death consequences, we can replace our negative thoughts with more productive ones.

We can remind ourselves that rejection is often subjective and influenced by various factors beyond our control. With this shift in perspective, we can approach rejection as a valuable learning experience, an opportunity to grow and improve rather than a definitive judgment of our worth.

Breaking the Cycle of Negative Thoughts

Salespeople, in particular, are often vulnerable to a dangerous spiral of negative thoughts following rejection. When faced with a rejection, it is easy to get caught in a downward spiral of worry, anxiety, and self-doubt.

This negative cycle not only hampers our emotional well-being but also impairs our effectiveness in sales. The more we dwell on negative outcomes, the more our confidence wavers, and the less persuasive and motivated we become.

Recognizing this pattern is crucial for breaking free from its grasp. By actively reframing our thoughts, we can disrupt the negative cycle and redirect our focus towards positive outcomes.

Instead of dwelling on what went wrong or personalizing the rejection, we can shift our attention to the lessons learned, the potential for improvement, and the possibilities of future success.

It is essential to understand that rejection is not solely a psychological problem but also a physiological one. The fear of rejection triggers stress responses in our bodies, which further perpetuate the negative thought patterns.

By recognizing this physiological aspect and consciously choosing to reframe our thoughts, we can liberate ourselves from the chains of fear and propel ourselves towards success in sales and beyond.

The Power of the Opening Phase

The opening phase of the sales process is an aspect often overlooked in sales literature. Selling goes beyond pitching product features and freebies. It involves building rapport, asking questions, and understanding the customer’s needs. A strong opening early on in the sales process sets the stage for a successful close.

The opening phase in sales is a critical juncture that is often overlooked or rushed through in the pursuit of closing a deal. However, this initial stage holds immense significance in building rapport, establishing trust, and gaining a deep understanding of the customer’s needs and desires. When sales professionals invest time and effort into creating meaningful connections with their prospects early on, they lay the foundation for a successful and mutually beneficial relationship.

Building Trust Is Essential To Winning The Sale

One of the key reasons why establishing connections with prospects during the opening phase is crucial is the building of trust. In any sales interaction, trust forms the bedrock of a successful relationship. By taking the time to truly listen to prospects, showing genuine interest, and demonstrating empathy, sales professionals can cultivate trust and credibility. When prospects feel understood and valued, they are more likely to open up about their challenges, goals, and pain points, which provides invaluable insight for tailoring the sales approach and offering relevant solutions.

Prevent Objections Before They Arise

Moreover, establishing connections early on helps curb objections that may arise during the sales process. When prospects feel a sense of connection and trust, they are more receptive to the sales professional’s message and less likely to raise objections or barriers.

By investing time in the opening phase to understand the prospect’s motivations, concerns, and preferences, sales professionals can address potential objections proactively.

They can align their pitch with the prospect’s specific needs and present compelling solutions that directly address their pain points. This personalized approach not only minimizes objections but also increases the chances of a successful sale.

Furthermore, the opening phase allows sales professionals to gather vital information about the prospect’s decision-making process and the key stakeholders involved.

By building relationships early on, they can uncover valuable insights into the prospect’s organizational structure, decision-making dynamics, and the specific criteria that influence their purchasing decisions. Armed with this knowledge, sales professionals can tailor their approach, navigate internal challenges, and present a persuasive case that resonates with the prospect and aligns with their unique context.

The Opening Phase Sets The Stage

Recognizing the importance of the opening phase in sales is crucial for building rapport, establishing trust, and gaining a deep understanding of the customer’s needs.

By investing time and effort into creating connections with prospects early on, sales professionals can lay a solid foundation for successful relationships, mitigate objections, and increase their chances of closing deals. The opening phase serves as a valuable opportunity to establish a strong rapport, gather key insights, and pave the way for a fruitful sales journey.

The innovative Sales Gravy University sales training platform gives on the go individuals and entire teams easy, affordable access to the world’s top sales trainers in both live and on-demand courses. Now you can learn how to win in sales anywhere, anytime, and on any device. 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Moving From A Culture of Efficiency to A Culture of Effectiveness

• Acting and improv skills are similar to soft skills in sales— leading with empathy and understanding your audience and your customer is paramount.
• Sales leaders need to build a strong sales culture and eliminate mediocrity, which starts with the willingness to invite, embrace, and accept feedback.
• Synchronous conversations are making a comeback. Whether you get coffee with a prospect in your own town or fly to your prospect’s city to close a deal, face-to-face interactions are invaluable.
• Sales isn’t an easy profession, and leaders should be honest and transparent with their teams about the work required to close deals.
• Efficiency does not equal effectiveness. Sales technology should focus on making people better, not just faster.
• Sales organizations need to adapt to changes in the market and rethink what’s working and what’s not.

In this podcast, Mike Cabot and Jeb Blount discuss the challenges of sales in the current climate, including the impact of technology and the need for emotional intelligence when dealing with analytical stakeholders. They also emphasize the importance of celebrating small victories and providing feedback to improve performance.

Sales Is Like Acting— Empathy Is Essential

As a child, Mike Cabot and his sister starred in a local cable television show for seven years. Later on, Cabot gained acting experience both in theater and through featuring in commercials.

In his sales career, he has been able to leverage the improv skills he learned from acting at an early age to connect, engage in deep listening, and show empathy to prospects and clients.

The job of a sales professional isn’t just to sell a product or service, it’s to help people. And in order to truly help people, great sales professionals have to be great empathizers.

The same can be said for actors. To tell a story convincingly, an actor must take on the character’s persona. She must step into their shoes and see the world through their eyes. Otherwise, it’s not authentic.

Empathy is a critical skill for sales professionals, and acting is an excellent way to hone this skill by putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

This is what sets the best salespeople apart. They can quickly and easily see the world through someone else’s eyes and adjust their messaging, style, and strategy accordingly.

The Show Must Go On

Often, people make excuses for why they can’t sell, such as a lack of leads or poor marketing. As sales professionals, we must deliver for the audience in front of us, no matter what. Embracing this idea is crucial in building a strong sales culture.

Mastering the same soft skills that improv actors use is critical because you must listen not only with your ears, but also with your eyes and intuition. On stage, if you weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t know how to respond when something gets thrown back at you.

Dealing With Analytical Stakeholders

Buyers use emotions to make decisions. Tap into their emotions and stories to meet their needs.

Engaging with analytical stakeholders in sales requires a thoughtful and empathetic approach. Understanding the different levels and roles within the stakeholder groups is crucial, as each individual has unique concerns and priorities.

While these stakeholders are analytical by nature, it’s important to recognize that emotions play a significant role in their decision-making process.

By tapping into their emotional needs and sharing relevant stories, sales professionals can connect with them on a deeper level and demonstrate how their product or service can help solve their problems.

Building trust and showing the value of saving time or avoiding negative outcomes are key strategies for engaging with these stakeholders.

Salespeople often encounter challenges when engaging with analytical stakeholders. The lack of immediate emotional response from these stakeholders can sometimes make salespeople feel insecure and lead them to overcompensate by talking too much.

Developing emotional control and patience becomes essential in these situations. Sales professionals should maintain faith in their approach, asking the right questions, and genuinely trying to help.

Over time, as trust is built and the salesperson demonstrates the ability to address the stakeholder’s concerns, these analytical stakeholders can become strong allies, paving the way for successful sales interactions. Mastering the art of engaging with analyzers opens doors to success in various sales scenarios.

Celebrate The Small Victories

Recognizing and celebrating small wins in sales is crucial for both individual salespeople and sales teams. It starts with transparency and setting realistic expectations, acknowledging that success requires effort. While closing deals is important, it’s equally vital to track other metrics like account outreach and pipeline generation.

By highlighting these milestones, individuals are encouraged to keep going and find motivation in the journey. Celebrating every win, no matter how small, creates a positive and supportive environment, fostering desired behaviors and instilling a sense of accomplishment throughout the sales process.

Viewing sales as a series of building blocks and acknowledging the value of each step taken before closing a deal reinforces the idea that consistent effort leads to success. By celebrating incremental achievements and focusing on building a strong foundation, sales professionals can stay motivated, sustain momentum, and achieve greater success.

Feedback Is How We Grow

Feedback plays a crucial role in personal and professional growth, regardless of one’s position within the organization. It’s a two-way street where both sales leaders and their sales team can benefit from open and candid communication.

Offering feedback allows leaders to provide guidance and constructive criticism, while accepting feedback demonstrates a willingness to learn and improve. Feedback is valuable, no matter one’s position or authority.

By creating an environment where feedback is encouraged, leaders can foster a culture of continuous improvement and learning, which benefits the entire organization in the long run.

“Before And After” Coaching Routine

Another effective practice in sales leadership is the “before and after routine”. This coaching routine involves setting objectives and targets before a sales call, discussing the strengths and successes afterward, and then openly discussing areas for improvement.

By starting with the positives and creating a safe space for team members to voice their opinions, leaders can encourage collaborative conversation where everyone’s input is valued, regardless of their age or experience level.

In the end, feedback is a vital component of growth and development in the sales profession. Both sales leaders and team members can benefit from actively seeking and providing feedback.

By embracing feedback and incorporating it into routine coaching and reflection processes, sales organizations can create a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration, and success.

The innovative Sales Gravy University sales training platform gives on the go individuals and entire teams easy, affordable access to the world’s top sales trainers in both live and on-demand courses. Now you can learn how to win in sales anywhere, anytime, and on any device. 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Human Connection Is Irreplaceable

• Dress appropriately for the situation and audience— it’s the little things that close the sale.
• Do research on who you’re trying to sell to and a personalized follow-up email after a demo or meeting that adds value to the conversation. Video messages following a meeting are a unique way to stay in front of your prospect and show them you truly care about helping them solve their business challenges.
• Use handwritten notes to show appreciation and make your communication more human. Taking the time to write a note to your prospect demonstrates your commitment to professionalism and helps built trust.
• Taking a personalized and phone first sales approach still matters, especially in a world taken over by AI.
• Leverage checklists to remember and systematize important tasks. Even surgeons and pilots use checklists to make sure that details don’t fall through the cracks.
• Sales is a contact sport. Leaders should train, drill, and reinforce the basics and fundamentals with their sales team every single day.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount and Will Yarbrough, VP of Sales at Fleetio, discuss what it means to be a human seller in the age of robots.

Jeb and Will dive into the importance of having organic conversations versus over-engineering the sales process. In this conversation, you’ll learn the value of a good first impression, how to maintain engagement with a prospect following a demo, and why being coachable is a strength in sales.

Selling In A Tough Industry Takes Grit— And Emotional Intelligence

Industry experience— especially when selling to blue-collar workers out in the field who are more accustomed to turning wrenches than punching buttons on an app — can be a strength or a weakness for new sales professionals.

Most sales organizations seek individuals who are good communicators, curious, and confident, but also have enough industry knowledge to be credible.

And while industry knowledge is important is sales, the ability to deal with people is crucial.

People with industry experience tend to want everything to be perfect before they can close a deal. As a result, they may take longer to ramp up in a sales organization than those without as much experience, but they can still be taught the right questions to ask.

New sales professionals who don’t have much industry experience will be successful if they know how to ask the right questions, find opportunities for ROI, and learn how to close deals in the process.

Taking a more human approach to selling means that experience pales in comparison to the importance of heart and mindset.

The Sales Process Is Overcomplicated

Too many sales organizations are guilty of over-engineering the selling process. The most important thing to remember is that you’re a human being having a conversation with another human being. Here are a few ways to simplify the sales process (that don’t require the help of a robot).

Professionalism Builds Trust

Buying is an emotional and deeply human experience. In order to close sales and maintain positive customer relationships, you need to keep in mind that prospects buy the person before they buy the product.

The little things matter. It’s not about the outcome, but the steps that you take to get to that outcome.

So if you choose not to wear a collared shirt on virtual calls, you put on a hat, decide not to shave, or don’t take care in making sure your video presence and audio quality are top-notch, you are taking a series of small risks.

And those risks can greatly impact the velocity of the sale, getting the sale, or the trust that you build with your prospect.

Present yourself in a professional manner, including your appearance, lighting, audio, and video quality. These details may seem small, but they can have a big impact on the trust and velocity of the sale. Remember, the little things matter.

The Humble Checklist

Pilots and brain surgeons implement a checklist for every task they must perform. They aren’t stupid; they have a lot to remember and many high-stakes elements that can slip through the cracks.

Utilizing a checklist throughout the sales process can make it easier to remember and execute on important tasks, something that busy sales professionals often struggle to do.

When you refer to a checklist every time you engage with a prospect, you’re more likely to remember and complete each necessary task to help you advance the sale.

Personalization Over Systems

One of the most effortless and foolproof ways to make a lasting impression with your prospect and create competitive differentiation is by sending a handwritten note or a personal video message thanking your prospect for their time after your meeting.

It’s a small, but essential gesture that makes a difference. The best part is, you don’t need a system to write a note. Simply make it a habit to write and send a note right after conversations with your prospects.

It’s a simple way to show gratitude that they will notice, appreciate, and remember.

Remember To Engage In Real Conversation

Especially in the world of data and systems, the human element of selling can get lost. Every sales team these days has five or more systems in their tech stack to support sales acceleration.

With that comes a more robust playbook and guidance on how to sell and use those systems. However, one of the big pitfalls in modern sales is becoming too robotic.

You might think, “I have to follow this process. I’m going to ask this discovery question, and this discovery question, and this discovery question,” and forget that you’re just having a conversation with someone.

In doing so, you put undue pressure on yourself to follow the process and check every box, instead of just having a conversation like two human beings.

Asking questions like, “What is the downstream impact of missing a preventative maintenance activity?” can help humanize the experience and encourage conversation.

We lose credibility when we forget that we’re just talking to somebody and opt for asking a robotic, textbook question that should be on a form or a survey.

Don’t Be Afraid to Lead

It’s easy to take shortcuts, but investing time and effort in doing the little things right increases the chances of success.

As a leader, it’s important to remind and educate sellers about the value of the basics and fundamentals. Athletic coaches understand the importance of drilling the basics and reinforcing muscle memory.

Coaches and leaders must train, drill, and reinforce the basics and fundamentals every day because one bad habit or easy win can undo everything you teach.

Accountability and Motivation Are Key

Many leaders avoid conflict and fail to address problems because they are afraid to confront bad sales behaviors, which allows them to continue.

In the past, it was not uncommon for sales leaders to directly confront you and tell you to stop doing something that isn’t effective. They would push you to improve.

Today, some leaders lack the courage to lead sales in a more traditional way. Sales is a human endeavor that requires excellence, protection of the brand and the process, and achieving targets. It’s a survival of the fittest. You need to be good at your craft and be willing to learn from your mistakes.

Leaders must have the ability to motivate their sellers when they’re doing well, provide constructive feedback when they’re not, and offer support when they need it.

In his bestselling book, Fanatical Prospecting, Jeb Blount outlines his innovative approach to prospecting that works for real people, in the real world, with real prospects. Download your FREE chapters of Fanatical Prospecting here.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

• Art Munin, Ph.D. from Liaison International is the guest on this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, hosted by Sales Gravy Master Trainer, Gina Trimarco. They discussed Munin’s transition into a sales career.
• Munin debunked the myth that one must choose a lifelong career straight out of college, highlighting that more individuals are transitioning into different career paths, such as sales, later in life.
• Sales is presented as an exciting, dynamic career with opportunities for personal growth, financial success, and professional satisfaction.
• Various reasons for transitioning into sales later in life are discussed, including dissatisfaction with previous jobs, the desire for higher income, and the allure of competition inherent in sales.
• Professionals transitioning from non-sales careers bring valuable transferable skills. Examples include communication and people skills from educators, technical expertise from engineers, and analytical skills from financial professionals.
• The transition into sales can be challenging, particularly for those with no direct experience. Adapting to the performance-driven nature of sales and mastering Sales Specific Emotional Intelligence are key.
• It’s possible to transition into a sales career later in life and thrive with the right mindset, transferable skills, and a willingness to learn and adapt.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Art Munin, Ph.D. from Liaison International joins guest host Gina Trimarco, Sales Gravy Master Trainer and Director of Coaching Programs, to discuss how he made the transition into a career in sales.

You’ll love the story of how Art talked his way onto the podcast by serenading Gina with a Bon Jovi tune.

This episode is a must-listen for people who are interested in exploring new horizons and sales leaders who may be neglecting non-traditional talent in their recruitment strategies.

Debunking Career Myths

There’s a myth that continues to pervade the corporate landscape: you need to pick your lifelong career fresh out of college and stick to it. However, the modern work environment paints a more varied picture, with more people transitioning into entirely different career paths well into their professional lives. One such transition that’s gaining traction is the move into sales from non-sales careers.

Sales is Exciting

Sales is an exciting career, brimming with potential for personal growth, financial success, and professional satisfaction. It offers a dynamic work environment where no two days are alike.

It is also a role where direct, tangible outcomes (like meeting quotas or securing contracts) can lead to immediate rewards.

Furthermore, the advent of technology has made it possible for salespeople to work from diverse locations, offering both flexibility and freedom.

Why Transition Later in Life?

There are various reasons why people choose to transition into sales later in life. Some find their previous jobs unfulfilling or stagnant, some are driven by the desire for higher income potential, and others are enticed by the challenge and competitive spirit inherent in sales.

Moreover, many skills acquired in other professions – such as communication, problem-solving, and relationship building – are directly transferrable to sales roles.

Transferrable Skills from Non-Sales Careers

Regardless of their previous career path, professionals transitioning into sales bring a wealth of transferable skills.

For example, educators have exceptional communication and people skills, which are vital for engaging clients and building relationships. Likewise, engineers or technicians might have the technical expertise that’s invaluable for sales in the tech sector. Professionals from financial or consulting backgrounds bring analytical and problem-solving skills, enabling them to understand a customer’s needs and craft appropriate solutions.

Building on these existing skills, many find that they already have the foundation necessary for sales success. The key is to identify these skills and learn how to apply them effectively in a sales context.

Navigating the Transition

Despite the potential advantages, transitioning into sales can also bring its share of challenges.

One of the most significant hurdles is breaking into the field without direct experience. It’s crucial for individuals to leverage their transferable skills effectively during the application and interview process.

Another challenge is adapting to the performance-driven nature of sales, which can be stressful and highly competitive. To overcome this, new salespeople should focus on building resilience and a growth mindset, viewing challenges as opportunities for learning and development.

Finally, newcomers to sales will have to master soft skills and Sales EQ: Sales Specific Emotional Intelligence. This includes learning how to listen effectively, ask the right questions, and present products or services in a way that meets the needs of the potential customer.

Make the Leap Into a Career in Sales

Transitioning into a sales career later in life can be an enriching and rewarding experience. With the right mindset, transferable skills, and a willingness to learn and adapt, individuals from non-sales careers can thrive in the dynamic world of sales. It’s never too late to make the leap and embrace the opportunities that a sales career has to offer.

Our Foundations in Selling on-demand learning path is designed to help new sales professionals gain the skills and confidence they need to launch a successful career in Sales. Learn More Here

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount (Sales Gravy CEO and author of Sales EQ) and Graham Hooper (CEO of Ellison Technologies) discuss the keys to leading your sales team in uncertain times. You’ll learn how to succeed in volatile economic times by effectively handling decision deferment objections and conducting thorough research during the discovery phase of the sales process.

Key Takeaways:

• Salespeople can successfully navigate the transition from a red hot market to a stagnant down market, but it requires grit, discipline, and creativity.
• In uncertain economic times and a world increasingly influenced by the power of AI, sales-specific emotional intelligence and human-to-human communication are the most important skills a salesperson can have when establishing trust and building relationships with buyers.
• Conducting effective, deep discovery and handling buying decision deferment objections will give salespeople a competitive edge in any economic climate.

Transitioning From A Red Hot Market To A Stagnant Down Market

Many salespeople today are struggling to make the transition from taking advantage of a red hot market to navigating the doldrums of volatile economic times. Some sectors, like real estate, are experiencing the brunt of these changes in the market, where other sectors, like defense are seeing more profit.

Economic swings are cyclical and always will be, but especially in the last twenty four months, sales organizations are moving to a more traditional kind of selling.

Salespeople who know how to get creative, grind it out, and prioritize the fundamentals will see the most success in times like these. However, it’s not easy to make that mindset shift and truly rise to the moment.

The One Thing That Will Always Guarantee Your Success in Sales

For the individual salesperson, the most important thing that you can have in your arsenal to make it out on top in volatile economic times is not above-average intellect or a winning personality— it’s grit.

This is this ability to dig deep and take your career, your future, and your life into your own hands when things are difficult and it seems like there is very little in your control.

Getting up, getting yourself ready for the day, protecting your time and your energy, and making sure that you are putting yourself in front of the right people at the right time with the right message.

Nothing Compares to Real Human Connection

Another strength that will set you apart from other salespeople and allow you to break through the noise and truly connect with the right customers is sales-specific emotional intelligence— Sales EQ.

Salespeople aren’t the only ones experiencing tough times. Real human connection matters today more than ever. You must have the ability to see eye to eye with your customers, meet them where they are, and make them comfortable enough to open up and share their toughest business challenges.

When you connect the dots between their biggest problems and how you can help solve them, you build the foundation for trust and create lasting business relationships as a result. Conducting deep discovery is the key to helping your customers close the gaps and see positive change from your solutions.

The Only Communication You Can Trust is Human-to-Human

In today’s world, human-to-human communication is the only trustworthy form of communication. With more AI tools and services than any one person could take full advantage of, it’s not secret that we rely heavily on automation to maintain productivity and be maximally effective.

The downside of this is that written communication can easily be created and distributed by AI, which is often seen as inauthentic or untrustworthy.

So has the role of the salesperson changed in the expanding world of automatic and artificial intelligence? The short answer is yes. The rise and mass adoption of automation has certainly changed the value and responsibility of salespeople to be effective communicators.

In a world where robots are increasingly doing work for us, it is important for sales professionals to have strong communication skills, know how to build genuine trust, and establish close business relationships.

Spend 80% of The Sales Process In Discovery

That’s precisely why salespeople should invest about 80% of the time in the sales process in discovery. What are you learning about your buyer? What are you asking them?

Discovery is where salespeople face the most heartache, because when buyers are holding back, sellers don’t have any ammunition to reduce fear because they didn’t ask great discovery questions and do the work upfront.

In times of abundance and prosperity, salespeople skip that crucial step because buyers will decide to buy anyway. Salespeople often let their guard down and get transactional.

Doing deep level discovery is the only way to stay afloat in a down market because buyers are vulnerable, hesitant, and hard to reach. The transactional sale will not get the job done in volatile times.

You Need A Solid Business Case To Be Competitive

It’s easy to be complacent when times are good. But things have changed, even in growing industries. The competitive landscape is now much more intense than it used to be.

To succeed in this environment, you need to do your homework. You must have a solid business case for why your product is a good fit for the customer, and that requires a a great deal of research.

Once you have a use case and understand the challenges of the industry, you need to address any concerns that are specific to your buyers’ unique situation, business, or sector and show proven ROI. Doing your homework is fundamental to success, and that homework is done in discovery.

4 Ways to Handle Buying Decision Deferment Objections

Inevitably, buyers will present salespeople with decision deferment objections. It is imperative that salespeople handle these objections with tact, at both the emotional and rational level. Salespeople can prepare for these objections in a couple of ways.

Ask “Why” Questions to Uncover Fears

Ask questions that reveal their hesitation to buy, the perceived risk of purchase or adoption, and what is at stake for them in this relationship.

This will allow you to understand the fundamental reason why they don’t want to buy, and give you insight into how you can help them move forward in their purchasing decision, and ultimately create a sense of trust that reassures your buyer that you know what is most important to them and their company.

Get Creative With Soft Benefits

Whether this is providing extra training, additional customer support, access to premium features, or other similar benefits, giving your buyer an improved experience at little to no additional cost to you, while drawing their focus away from pricing alone.

Giving them some added benefits or bonus features helps them feel that they are getting value from your product or service that increases the return on their investment.

Create a Sense of Urgency

Sometimes it helps to instill a sense of urgency so that buyers are less likely to pull back from a purchasing decision. In this case, offer pricing that’s only available for a limited time, or offer an add-on that has limited availability.

Target Companies That Hold Steady In Down Markets

Of course, this isn’t always possible, but targeting larger companies with more flexible budgets, versus smaller companies that are on a feast or famine cycle will make it easier to prevent facing buying deferment objections in the first place.

A Slow Market Is Not A Dead-End

Salespeople can navigate the transition from a thriving market to a slow one by staying tough, focused, and innovative. In uncertain times, sales-specific emotional intelligence and authentic human-to-human communication are crucial skills to establish trust and build relationships with buyers.

By dedicating 80% of the sales process to discovery, salespeople can make a compelling case for why their product is a good fit for their buyer and learn what matters most to them, so that decision deferment objections don’t clog up the pipeline.

In this on-demand sales training on Sales Gravy University the world’s most sought-after sales trainer, Jeb Blount, delivers an essential blueprint for staying motivated, keeping your pipeline full, increasing sales, retaining your customers, and advancing your career in times of uncertainty and change. 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this special episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Sales Gravy Senior Master Sales Trainer Brad Adams and bestselling author of Coffee’s for Closers, Tony Morris, dive into the art of great discovery, how to ask questions that build rapport and create engagement, and why better questions set the groundwork for better results.

Podcast Takeaways

• The ability to listen actively and conduct effective discovery is the most important skill for salespeople.
• Authentic engagement is a direct result of great discovery, which is not possible without deep and active listening.
• Autopilot is the reason why many salespeople struggle to ask the right questions during the discovery call.
• Before every discovery call, salespeople should establish a clear desired outcome, create a list of criteria to frame questions, and prepare to lead prospects through the process.
• There are five questions that salespeople should ask in every discovery call, including tag on questions, statement questions, replay questions, clarification questions, and future questions.
• By seeing the world through customers’ eyes, salespeople can achieve authentic engagement and effective discovery.

Great Discovery Is A Sales Superpower

The two biggest priorities for salespeople are building pipeline through prospecting and discovery. Not expert negotiation, perfect presentation skills, or even closing.

Those steps are integral to the sales process, but not as fundamentally critical as getting in front of as many potential clients as possible, and authentically engaging with as many of them as you can.

Authentic engagement is the result of great discovery, and you can’t conduct bulletproof discovery without deep and active listening.

The Biggest Mistake You Can Make In Sales

Listening is one of the most vital skills that a salesperson can hone and develop.

Failure to really listen to your prospect, especially on a discovery call, only sets you up to make more mistakes later on in the sales process, causing you to risk jeopardizing the opportunity.

In discovery conversations, if you’re talking more than your prospect, you are reducing your likelihood of effectively connecting with and engaging them.

Don’t just listen to respond, listen to learn.

Additionally, it’s difficult to do effective discovery without the right questions, and without listening to your prospect, you will ask terrible questions.

If there’s one thing that will doom an opportunity before it even picks up speed is wasting your and your prospect’s time on the wrong questions.

Derailing the focus of the conversation with surface level questions, or misinterpreting your prospect’s answers because you’re too busy thinking of a response to actually listen, will only make your job harder and your prospect feel ignored.

Autopilot Is Killing Your Discovery Process

One of the reasons that many salespeople struggle to ask the right questions during the discovery call is that they run on autopilot.

This is a serious problem because instead of approaching the discovery call with proper preparation, confidence, and awareness, they ask questions without thinking about what they’re asking.

And as we know, asking bad questions will reap poor results.

Luckily, the solution to this is preparing before every discovery call. Here are three steps you can take before your next conversation to ensure that you are ready to conduct great discovery.

Establish a clear desired outcome.

What are you aiming towards? Is it to set up a demo, meeting, presentation, or is it to make a sale? Have a clear, defined outcome for the conversation, before you even get started. This will help you to get the most value out of the conversation while staying on the right track.

Create a list of criteria to frame your questions.

What are the key criteria you need to know by the end of the conversation in order to set the deal up for success? Before a call, determine the right questions to ask to get the information you need.

For example, you might want to know how many stakeholders are involved in the purchasing decision. Prepare questions in advance that will help you to specifically get to that answer.

Prepare to lead them through the process.

Every call discovery call should entail different information, but follow a similar path. You, as the salesperson, are in control of where you take the prospect during your conversation. It’s the salesperson’s job to lead, educate, and take them along the established process. 

The Five Discovery Questions

As you lead your prospect through the discovery process, take the time to really listen, and use the resources you’ve prepared in advance to guide your conversation, here are five questions you should be weaving into every discovery call.

Tag On Question

This one is very simple— when your prospect asks a question or shares some information, question them back or ask them about the information they provided. Tag on to what they’ve said to immerse yourself in the conversation and go deeper with them about what matters most.

Statement Question

When your prospect provides you with information related to their business or the problems they are facing, use a statement to imply an area of interest or curiosity. This will prompt them to share some details or context, and takes the interrogative pressure off of your end of the conversation.

For example, they may share some information around a certain market trend they’re seeing. To which you could reply,

“That’s interesting, I haven’t done a lot of research on that. Tell me what impact that’s had on your business.”

Replay Question

As you listen to their responses or the information they provide during your conversation, take note of a few details and circle back to them.

This show that you’re not only listening to them, but what they’re saying is important enough for you to pay attention, make note, remember, and seek more information about the subject. It’s an amazing technique for bridging the connection between you and your prospect.

Clarification Question

Prospects will often say things like, “Look, we need this fixed quickly.” This is where you would ask a clarifying question like, “What does quickly mean to you in this case?”

Or, they might say something along the lines of, “We are just looking for an easy to use software.”

You might reply, “So I can understand a little bit more, what does easy to use look like in your world?”

This allows you to get to the heart of what matters to them, why it matters, so you can demonstrate true value.

Future Question

Instead of asking what immediate outcome they want to see by using your solution, ask them a question like this one:

“Let’s fast forward a year from today. How do you know my product/service has been successful for you?” 

Why? Because it’s thought provoking and it’s a disruption. When you get your prospect thinking differently about their desired future state, you are forcing them to open up and be honest as opposed to firing off a canned response to a question that they already anticipated.

See The World Through Your Customer’s Eyes

99% of salespeople see the world through their own eyes. The top 1% see it through their customer’s lens. The easiest way to connect with your prospect is to simply make them comfortable, match their tone, and use terms and language that they have previously referenced.

Over the telephone, 83% of communication is how you sound. Listen to their tone, their pace, their timber, and their volume. Be a chameleon. Use those clues to inform how you speak and what information is most important to them.

When you frame the conversation and mirror their tone, you show your prospect that you’re listening, you care, you’re like them, and you understand them.

The more you do that, the more connected your prospect will be and the more likely they are to buy from you.

 

Sales Gravy University features the world’s most sought after sales & leadership trainers, authors, and thought leaders. Brad Adams and Tony Morris are instructors on Sales Gravy University where you can take their courses on prospecting, communication skills, closing, negotiation and more.

 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount sits down with celebrity chef and entrepreneur Vera Stewart, to learn how persistence and a “never take no for an answer” mindset helped her build a business empire.

Southern Home Cook Turned Nationally Recognized Celebrity Chef

Vera’s entrepreneurial journey started back in her undergrad days, baking cakes and pies for her chemistry professor just to get a passing grade. After graduating from the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) she taught school for four years before starting her family and becoming a stay at home mom. 

But Vera missed the sense of self-reliance that having an income brought her, and started a catering business out of her home kitchen in Cartersville, Georgia.

The rest of the story is legendary as she leveraged luck, chance meetings, relentless persistence, and an infectious competitive spirit to build a business empire and nationally known brand in hospitality and cooking.  

Taking Risks Creates Opportunity for Success

As her business grew, Vera took advantage of opportunities as they arose. What some might have considered a risk, Vera saw as an area of potential.

From catering the governor’s luncheon, to appearing on Food Network, starting her own TV show, and writing amazing cookbooks, Vera always rose to the challenge, took advantage of every opportunity, and never took no for an answer.

She was able to climb to the next level again and again at different points in her story because she held on to a simple, but powerful mantra: “All they can do is say no.”

The VeryVera Show Origin Story

Through a stroke of luck and the willingness to say yes in the face of uncertainty, Vera landed a spot on Throwdown With Bobby Flay. It was a pivot point that changed everything. 

Following her appearance with Bobby Flay, a local Augusta, Georgia TV station offered to let Vera record six episodes for her own show. It was an instant hit and she wanted more.

When she was told that it would take five years to get syndicated, Vera was undaunted. She approached a station in Savannah, GA with a pitch to syndicate her new show. 

Value First

Vera pitched her show to WSAV, with a crucial mindset—she led with value and focused on what was in it for them. She demonstrated exactly how she could help them sell more advertising.

This is how The VeryVera Show landed its first syndicated market. Today, The VeryVera Show is in 40 markets with over 300 episodes to date and has never had a station cancel. 

Resilience. Tenacity. Adversity.

Vera’s entrepreneurial journey is as inspiring as it is informative. What we can learn from her story is that resilience, tenacity, and the willingness to face adversity are invaluable to paving the way to a successful business or career.

Sales is a unique profession that affords salespeople the opportunity to essentially work as an entrepreneur within an organization to earn commission.

In many respects, you are your own boss, call your own shots, and have an incredibly high earning potential compared to other lines of work. The only way to take advantage of that potential is to overcome obstacles, take risks, deal with rejection, and not take no for an answer.

Sales professionals who adopt an entrepreneurial mindset can leverage their skills, knowledge, and experience to achieve remarkable success. Entrepreneurs are known for their ability to innovate, take risks, and seize opportunities, and salespeople who embody these traits can excel in their careers. Here are five ways that salespeople can harness an entrepreneurial mindset to be successful.

5 Ways Salespeople Can Harness An Entrepreneurial Spirit to Advance Their Career Approach Your Career With A Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is the belief that one’s abilities can be developed through hard work and dedication. Salespeople who have a growth mindset are more likely to see challenges as opportunities to learn and grow. They are also more likely to embrace new technologies, methodologies, and sales techniques that can help them improve and achieve their goals.

Take Initiative and Ownership of Your Future

Entrepreneurs are known for their ability to take initiative and create their own opportunities. Similarly, salespeople who take ownership of their work are more likely to be successful. They should take the initiative to identify new prospects, develop new sales strategies, and take risks when necessary to close deals.

Adapt and Pivot In The Face of Change

Entrepreneurs are known for their ability to pivot when necessary and adapt to changing market conditions. Salespeople who can adapt to changing customer needs, new sales techniques, and market trends are more likely to succeed. They should be open to feedback, willing to try new approaches, and able to pivot quickly when circumstances change.

Put Customers First— Always

Entrepreneurs know that their customers are the key to their success, and salespeople should adopt the same mindset. They should focus on building strong relationships with their customers, understanding their needs and preferences, and delivering value in every interaction. Salespeople who prioritize the customer experience are more likely to build long-term relationships that lead to repeat business and referrals.

Be Confidence

Vera attributes much of her success to asking for what she wants with relaxed, assertive confidence. Confidence is key in both sales and the entertainment industry, and Vera’s story reinforces just how important assertiveness is in achieving success.

People lean into relaxed confidence. Assertiveness demonstrates that you expect to win. When you want something— a meeting, a next step, a sale— ask in a way that shows you believe the answer will be yes, rather than in a way that suggests you already expect a no.

Challenge

Vera Stewart proved doubters wrong and built a food and hospitality empire because she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Take a moment to consider how you can break through barriers that are holding you back by adopting a “never take no for an answer” mindset. 

 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this fun episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount is joined by the incredible social media influencer and successful real estate agent, Alexander Zakharin. Jeb and Alexander discuss that when the going gets tough in the real estate market, the toughest real estate agents get fanatical about prospecting.

Alexander Zakharin’s Inspiring Real Estate Journey

Alexander Zakharin is a New York City real estate guru and a force on TikTok. He emigrated from Russia to the United States in 2017 with a dream to live and work in the greatest city in the world.

When he had visited NYC a few years before, it was love at first sight as he rode a greyhound bus all the way from Chicago into Midtown West. Drawn to the skyscrapers and beautiful buildings he would later rent and sell, Zakharin took the leap after attending college in the UK and moving back to Russia for work.

He arrived in the states without a job or a plan and stumbled into real estate by pure chance— with no real estate experience. He had a background in oil and gas that provided him some sales experience, but he’d never sold real estate. He jokes that his first real estate transaction was renting out his apartment in St. Petersburg the day before he left Russia.

Through a personal connection who rented apartments in Manhattan, Zakharin got an interview as a real estate agent. He then leveraged Fanatical Prospecting, grit, hard work and social media to climb the brutal real estate ladder in New York City.

Since then, Zakharin has sold over 31 million dollars in real estate proving that anything is possible when you set your mind to it. His astronomical success illustrates how the power of relentless prospecting combined with savvy social media strategies have become keys to success in the real estate market, no matter the economic conditions.

It Pays To Have An Entrepreneurial Mindset

Real estate is a highly competitive industry that is constantly influenced by market fluctuations. As a real estate agent, you are essentially your own boss, which means that you have the freedom to control your own earning potential.

This is ultimately what draws so many people into real estate, but it requires a significant mindset shift. You are responsible for your own success and income. In order to thrive in the real estate industry, you must be self-motivated and highly disciplined with a love for competition.

As a real estate agent, you work for yourself, and you are a self-employed entity. You earn exactly what you work for, and it’s up to you to make it happen. This was one of the main reasons that Zakharin saw early success in real estate and decided to stay on that path.

However, it’s important to remember that this success doesn’t come easily. Real estate agents must put in the time and effort to build their network, find leads, and close deals.

What It Takes To Be Great In Real Estate

Overwhelmingly, your ticket to success, regardless of what business or vertical you’re in (especially if it’s a service business), is meeting people and making connections. The more you focus on the human side of sales or service, the faster you close deals and the longer you hold onto relationships.

High performing professionals understand the value of building networks. Likewise, in real estate, the most successful agents are those who focus on the human aspect of their work and prioritize personal connections with potential clients.

Zakharin explains that the most successful new agents aren’t the one with the fanciest Excel sheets or the perfect messaging, they’re the ones who aren’t afraid to call up people in their network and say, “By the way, I’m doing real estate now. If you’re looking to rent or buy, reach out to me.”

Having conversations with people helps any professional gain practical knowledge and experience through learning by doing. There is no substitute for having real conversations with people and maintaining that personal connection is the key to achieving excellence in any business, but particularly in sales and real estate.

Why Shortcuts Don’t Work In Volatile Times

During times of crisis, such as a recession or turbulence, it’s important to go back to basics and fundamentals. Top professionals in various industries practice fundamental skills regularly, regardless of any crisis.

The problem is that many people quit doing the things that work once they start seeing success. This is human nature, and it’s why people struggle during tough times.

In times of abundance, people start believing that they are the ones responsible for their success, and they hit cruise control.

However, when the economy takes a downturn, they’re left wondering what happened and start looking for the next shortcut to success as they fall behind their competitors.

So, during both times of crisis and times of abundance, it’s essential to focus on the basics and not wait for the next opportunity to come to you.

How To Combat Market Fluctuations In Real Estate

Zakharin discusses the real estate market in New York, mentioning the low inventory of resale apartments and the high demand for new developments.

He suggests that developers are incentivized to sell their inventory and that buyers often try to take advantage of creative financing options like mortgage buyouts to get lower interest rates. He also notes that his agency is seeing more cash buyers and walkaways from contracts.

Zakharin cold calls anywhere from 25 to 50 expired listings each morning, and this technique is highly effective as many people who previously listed their apartments are still trying to sell them.

By building a prospecting routine into his day, Zakharin is able to combat the unpredictable market fluctuations that have been characteristic of the last several years.

Fanatical Prospecting

Fanatical Prospecting is a sales strategy that involves consistently and proactively reaching out to potential customers or clients.

The goal of fanatical prospecting is to fill the sales pipeline with a steady stream of new leads, so that you can focus on building relationships and closing deals with those who are most likely to convert into customers.

In terms of real estate, by consistently generating new leads and actively pursuing them, agents can create a steady stream of business and avoid the ups and downs of a feast-or-famine cycle.

Fanatical prospecting involves a disciplined approach to identifying potential customers, reaching out to them through various channels – phone, email, social media, and in-person – and building relationships with them over time. This approach requires persistence, dedication, and a willingness to work through rejection and failure.

Alexander Zakharin’s success in New York real estate correlates directly with his persistence in fanatical prospecting and never being afraid to pick up the phone or start a conversation with someone on the street.

Instead of being at the mercy of a volatile economy, Zakharin leverages his connections and constantly seeks out new business so that there’s always another opportunity right around the corner.

In his bestselling book, Fanatical Prospecting, Jeb Blount outlines his innovative approach to prospecting that works for real people, in the real world, with real prospects. Download your FREE chapters of Fanatical Prospecting here.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount (People Follow You) sits down with Leigh Cantrell and Rob Matura who are Regional Vice Presidents at Cigna to discuss the keys to leading multi-generational sales teams. It’s a fascinating conversation in which you’ll learn about the challenges and rewards of building sales teams from diverse age groups.

Challenges With Leading Multi-Generational Sales Team

Leading a multi-generational sales team can be challenging. The differences in values, work styles, communication preferences, and technological competencies will stretch you as a leader. These challenges include:

1. Different work values: Different generations may have varying work ethics and priorities, making it difficult to align everyone towards common goals.
2. Communication differences: Younger generations may prefer digital communication, while older generations may prefer face-to-face or phone conversations.
3. Technological competency: Younger generations may be more familiar with technology and digital tools, while older generations may require additional training and support.
4. Different learning styles: Different generations may have different preferences for how they learn and receive information, making it challenging to provide training and development opportunities that accommodate everyone.
5. Resistance to change: Some team members may resist new technologies, processes, or ways of working that are introduced to the team.

To effectively lead a multi-generational sales team, you must adapt to these differences and foster collaboration, communication, and teamwork across generations.

The Strengths of Multi-Generational Sales Teams

The good news is that multi-generational sales teams bring a diverse range of skills, perspectives, and experiences to the table. This  leads to numerous strengths over teams that lack this level of diversity.

1. Diversity of ideas: Team members from different generations can bring unique perspectives, experiences, and creative approaches to problem-solving and decision-making.
2. Range of skills: Different generations bring different skill sets and competencies to the table, such as expertise in different technologies or a deep understanding of traditional sales techniques.
3. Mentorship: Older team members can provide mentorship to younger team members, while younger team members can bring help their older team members embrace new ideas and tech.
4. Flexibility: A multi-generational sales team can be more flexible and adaptable to changing market conditions, customer needs, and technological innovations.
5. Increased customer understanding: Team members from different generations can help the team better understand and connect with customers from different age groups and backgrounds.

By leveraging the strengths of multi-generational sales teams, you will quickly increase sales and deliver better numbers.

Seven Keys to Leading and Coaching Multi-Generational Sales Teams

Leading a multi-generational sales team requires understanding and accommodating the differences and unique strengths of each generation. It can be rewarding, but it’s not easy.

Here are a few tips to effectively lead a multi-generational sales team:

1. Communicate effectively: Use clear, concise, and consistent communication to ensure everyone understands their role, goals, and expectations.
2. Provide opportunities for development: Offer ongoing training and professional development opportunities to help your team grow and meet their career aspirations.
3. Foster a positive work environment: Encourage collaboration, teamwork, and open communication, and celebrate the successes of your team.
4. Flexibility in work styles: Recognize and accommodate different work styles, preferences, and technological needs of each generation.
5. Embrace diversity: Recognize and respect the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of each team member.
6. Lead by example: Demonstrate the behaviors and values that you expect from your team, and maintain a positive and professional attitude at all times.
7. Regular check-ins and feedback: Schedule regular one-on-one meetings to check in with each team member and provide constructive feedback.

By being proactive and mindful of the different needs of your team members, you can create a positive, productive, and successful sales team.

Better Hiring in an Evolving Sales Talent Landscape

One of the key benefits of hiring a multi-generational sales team is the diversity of skills. For example, older salespeople may have years of experience in traditional sales techniques, while younger salespeople may be more familiar with leveraging digital sales tools.

Leaders who are adept at leveraging this range of skills build more agile teams that are more responsive to changing market conditions and customer demands. Younger salespeople may bring fresh ideas and enthusiasm to the team, while veteran salespeople may bring a wealth of experience and knowledge. This combination of skills, perspectives, and energy is exactly why multi-generational teams are so strong.

This also leads to cross-generational coaching. The veterans provide guidance to younger salespeople, helping them to develop their skills. At the same time, younger salespeople can bring energy, helping to keep the team motivated and engaged.

Finally, being open to hiring multi-generational salespeople gives you access to a wider pool of candidates. This makes it easier to recruit and hire top talent. The more talented your sales team, the more likely you are to crush your competition.

Download our FREE 25-page Interview and Hiring Guide that teaches you exactly how to conduct more effective interviews and engage sales candidates in deeper and more authentic conversations that allow you to make better sales hiring decisions.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, we are switching things up to take on a very important topic— Chronic Lyme Disease.

Jeb Blount (Sales Gravy) and Fred Diamond, co-founder of the Institute for Excellence in Sales (IES) discuss Fred’s latest book, Love, Hope, Lyme and his personal journey supporting a loved one with Chronic Lyme Disease.

You’ll learn what Lyme Disease is, the devastating effects that Chronic Lyme Disease has on hundreds of thousands of people each year, why prevention is key, and how you can support anyone in your life who is battling a chronic illness.

Living With Someone Who Has Chronic Lyme Disease

Living with a loved one who has Chronic Lyme Disease can be emotionally and mentally challenging, as the condition can cause a wide range of symptoms that can affect the person’s physical, emotional, and mental well-being. Your loved one may experience depression, anxiety, and irritability as a result of their condition.

Fred discusses how important it is to be supportive, patience, and understanding. He explains that everyone’s experience with Chronic Lyme Disease is different, so it’s important to be flexible and open to different approaches to treatment and care.

One of the most difficult aspects of living with someone who has Chronic Lyme Disease is dealing with the person’s ongoing fatigue and pain. These symptoms can make it difficult for the person to perform daily tasks and can also affect their mood and ability to socialize.

But, as Fred says, where there is love, there is hope.

What is Lyme Disease

Lyme disease is an infectious disease caused by a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi. It is primarily spread through the bite of infected black-legged ticks, also known as deer ticks. The black-legged tick is found in wooded, brushy, and grassy areas, and when it bites, it can transmit the bacteria to the person.

The most common early symptoms of Lyme disease include fever, fatigue, headache, muscle and joint pain, and a bull’s-eye rash. The rash, called erythema migraines (EM), usually appears at the site of the tick bite and can expand to become a large red area.

Chronic Lyme Disease

Chronic Lyme disease, also known as post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS), is a condition that can occur after a person has been treated for an initial infection with the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.

People with PTLDS may continue to experience symptoms, such as fatigue, pain, and cognitive difficulties, long after the bacteria have been cleared from their body. Fred explains that this is why it is difficult and frustrating for people who are living with Chronic Lyme disease to get physicians and loved ones to believe them.

The cause of PTLDS is not fully understood, but it is thought that it may be related to ongoing inflammation or damage to tissues caused by the initial infection. Some researchers also believe that the bacteria may persist in the body, despite treatment, and continue to cause symptoms.

Lyme Disease Symptoms

The symptoms of Lyme disease can vary widely and may be different for each person. The most common symptoms include:

1. Erythema migrans (EM) rash: A bull’s-eye rash that appears at the site of the tick bite, usually within 3 to 30 days after the tick bite. The rash can expand to become a large red area and may or may not be itchy or painful.
2. Flu-like symptoms: fever, chills, fatigue, headache, muscle and joint aches, and swollen lymph nodes.
3. Neurological symptoms: difficulty concentrating, memory problems, and headaches. Some people may also experience facial palsy, which is a temporary weakness or drooping of the facial muscles.
4. Cardiovascular symptoms: irregular heartbeats, or chest pain.
5. Arthritis: joint pain and swelling, especially in the knees.
6. Bell’s palsy: It is a sudden weakness or paralysis of the muscles on one side of the face.

Symptoms of Lyme disease can appear in stages. Early symptoms usually appear within days to weeks after a tick bite.

However, if left untreated, the infection can become chronic Lyme disease. It can spread to other parts of the body and cause more serious symptoms such as neurological problems, heart problems, and joint inflammation.

This is why it is important to seek medical attention immediately if you suspect you have been bitten by a tick and experience symptoms of Lyme disease.

Symptoms of Chronic Lyme Disease can be similar to those of early Lyme disease, but they may also include:

• Fatigue
• Muscle and joint pain
• Cognitive difficulties (such as memory problems and difficulty concentrating)
• Sleep disturbances
• Depression
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Headaches

It is important to note that, diagnosis of PTLDS can be difficult, as there is no specific test for the condition, and symptoms are often non-specific. Due to lack of specific diagnostic criteria, treatment for PTLDS is also not well defined, often results in misdiagnose, and can be controversial.

Treating Lyme Disease

In most cases, Lyme disease is treated with antibiotics, such as doxycycline or amoxicillin, and symptoms usually improve within a few weeks. However, if left untreated, the infection can spread to other parts of the body and cause more serious symptoms such as neurological problems, heart problems, and joint inflammation.

Treatment for Chronic Lyme Disease typically involves symptom management and may include medications to reduce pain and inflammation, and physical therapy to help manage joint pain. Some people may also benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy or counseling to help cope with the emotional and psychological effects of the condition.

How to Protect Yourself from Tick Bites

There are several steps you can take to avoid tick bites and reduce your risk of contracting Lyme disease:

1. Wear protective clothing: When spending time in wooded or grassy areas, wear long sleeves and pants to cover your skin. Light-colored clothing makes it easier to spot ticks. Tuck pants in boots and shirts in pants to create barriers.
2. Use tick repellent: There are many tick repellents available, including sprays, lotions, and permethrin-treated clothing.
3. Check your body for ticks: After spending time in tick-infested areas, thoroughly check your body for ticks, paying close attention to the areas around your waist, armpits, and scalp.
4. Keep ticks out of your yard: Keep your lawn trimmed and maintain a wood chip or gravel barrier between lawns and wooded areas.
5. Avoid wooded and brushy areas with high grass, and walk in the center of trails to avoid contact with overgrown grass and bushes.
6. Keep pets protected: Pets can bring ticks into your home, so be sure to keep them protected with tick repellents and by regularly checking them for ticks.
7. Know the symptoms of Lyme disease and seek medical attention immediately if you suspect you have been bitten by a tick and experience symptoms such as fever, fatigue, headache, muscle and joint pain, and a bull’s-eye rash.

It is important to note that, even if you take all the precautions, you may still get a tick bite. Therefore, it is important to check your body regularly for ticks, especially after spending time in tick-infested areas.

What to Do If You’ve Been Bitten By a Tick

If you have been bitten by a tick, it’s important to take the following steps to reduce your risk of contracting Lyme disease or other tick-borne illnesses:

1. Remove the tick as soon as possible: Use fine-tipped tweezers to grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible, and pull it straight out. Do not twist or crush the tick, as this can cause the tick to release more bacteria into your skin.
2. Clean the bite area: After removing the tick, clean the bite area with soap and water, and apply an antiseptic to the area to prevent infection.
3. Save the tick: Put the tick in a small container with a moistened cotton ball, and store it in the refrigerator or freezer. This can be helpful for identifying the tick species and for testing for tick-borne diseases.
4. Watch for symptoms: Symptoms of Lyme disease typically appear within 3 to 30 days of a tick bite and include fever, fatigue, headache, muscle and joint pain, and a bull’s-eye rash. If you experience any of these symptoms, contact your healthcare provider.
5. Take preventative measures: Use tick repellent and wear protective clothing to reduce your risk of tick bites.
6. Notify your doctor: Inform your doctor that you have been bitten by a tick and they may monitor you for the symptoms of Lyme disease or other tick-borne illnesses. They may also advise you to take antibiotics as a prophylactic treatment to prevent the disease.

It’s important to note that not all ticks carry Lyme disease and not all tick bites result in infection. But if you have been bitten by a tick and you have symptoms of Lyme disease, it is important to seek medical attention right away because, untreated, it can become Chronic Lyme Disease.

 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount and Colleen Stanley discuss the importance of Reality Testing sales pipeline opportunities. **Please note that this episode was recorded in a restaurant in Milan Italy. The content quality is excellent. The sound quality not so much.

Reality testing sales pipeline opportunities is an important step in ensuring the success of your sales efforts and the effective use of your time. It’s important to regularly check the accuracy of your assumptions about the viability of the deals in your pipeline against hard evidence that those deals are advancing in line with your sales process.

Reality testing is described as the ability to see things as they are, rather than what you would like them to be. You cannot afford to waste time with pipeline opportunities that you won’t win. Nor can you spend time with stakeholders who can’t or won’t buy.

For sellers, the greatest waste of time is spending it with the wrong prospect. As we move into a period of market volatility, it is critical for self-professionals to get real about what’s in their pipeline. 

The Problem With Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves paying more attention to information that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving less attention to information that contradicts those beliefs. It is the human tendency to see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. 

With sales pipeline opportunities, confirmation bias can lead salespeople to interpret new information in a way that fits with their preexisting views, even if that interpretation is not necessarily accurate. It’s the act of putting on rose colored lenses. 

For example: When a buyer says, “I might be interested.” It is interpreted to mean, “I absolutely want to do business with you.”

Confirmation bias can have a number of negative effects. It causes salespeople to hold onto false beliefs, make flawed decisions, have clouded judgement, and to be more resistant to pushback from leaders during pipeline reviews.

Awareness is the key to overcoming this natural human bias. This, in fact is what reality testing is all about – considering a diversity of viewpoints from your leaders and team members along with actively testing and challenging your own beliefs and assumptions. 

Empty Pipeline Lead Confirmation Bias 

Confirmation bias and false beliefs about sales pipeline opportunities run rampant on sales floors. Just sit in a pipeline review for ten minutes and you’ll hear salespeople using all manner of excuses to justify deals that will never close. This is why most sales pipelines are little more than pipe dreams and sales teams consistently miss forecasts.

The culprit, in most cases though, is simple: Empty pipelines.

When salespeople are consistently prospecting and keeping their pipe full, they are much more in tune with reality. When an opportunity is not advancing they quickly run a reality test and if it doesn’t meet their win probability standards, they’ll walk away.

In other words, a full pipeline begets clear judgement.

On the other hand, salespeople with empty pipelines are desperate. They are consumed with confirmation bias. They hold on to loser deals and waste inordinate amounts of time working opportunities that will never close.

Therefore, the easiest way to get good at reality testing your pipeline opportunities is to start prospecting and keep your pipeline full.

Focus on Winnable Deals

This may be a blinding flash of the obvious but if you want to sell more, spend your time with and invest resources in deals that will close. Desperate sales reps have a bad tendency to ignore win probability and scratch lottery tickets.

High-performing sales professionals are consistency reality testing on every deal to gauge win probability. When WP drops below a comfortable threshold, they walk away and focus their time and attention on winnable deals.

Ideal Qualified Prospects

Reality testing starts with getting clear on your ideal qualified prospect.

An ideal qualified prospect is a potential customer that is a good fit for your company’s products or services; AND that is also likely to make a purchase. In other words, high win probability.

In order to identify ideal qualified prospects, you’ll typically use criteria such as industry vertical, business size, demographics, geographic location, budget, purchasing habits, and other relevant characteristics.

The best place to begin when developing your IQP is by building a detailed description of the characteristics of your best existing customers. Take time to analyze customers that are the best fit, easy to work with, generate the most profit, and view you as a long-term partner.

Then, focus your time and attention on finding more of these types of customers. 

Test Engagement and Commitment

During sales conversations, be careful not to brush over signs that your prospect may not be committed to the process. Sometimes they are just not that into you or the process. Never forget that you cannot force someone to buy from you.

When a buyer seems to be hedging their bet or hesitating ask them about it directly.

Say: “I’m sensing some hesitance. It seems like you have a lot going on right now. I’m just curious, on a scale of 1-10, how committed are you to this project?”

The objective of this question is to switch hats with your buyer and compel them to sell you on why you should invest more time with them.

Likewise, test engagement by asking stakeholders to do things for you. If they are willing to give you information, lean in and answer questions honestly, willingly introduce you to other stakeholders, and agree to next steps, and show up to meetings it’s a good sign that they are engaged.

Conduct Pipeline Opportunity Reality Testing With Your Team and Sales Leader

No matter how hard you try, sometimes you are just too close to the deal. Sometimes confirmation bias is so strong you can’t break its gravitational force. This is where reviewing your deals with your sales team and leaders can help you get right with reality.

One key objective a deal review is to help you make an informed decision about whether to continue to pursue a particular deal or not.

The key is being open to hearing out the opinions of your sales team members no matter how bad the truth hurts. You’ll be surprised how often the members of your team can see through the BS story that you are telling yourself about the viability of the deal and cut right to the truth – your pipeline opportunity is never going to close.

Additional Tips for Reality Testing Sales Pipeline Opportunities

1. Review your pipeline regularly: Set aside time to review your pipeline opportunities on a regular basis, such as weekly or monthly. Identify any deals that are stuck in the pipeline and determine what action needs to be taken to move them forward.
2. Verify the accuracy of your pipeline: Check that all of the deals in your pipeline are accurate and reflect the current status of each opportunity within the sales process and stages.
3. Assess the likelihood of each deal closing: Evaluate the likelihood (win probability) of each deal closing and make adjustments to your pipeline accordingly. This could involve moving deals to a different stage or removing them from the pipeline if they are no longer viable.
4. Identify any bottlenecks: Look for any bottlenecks in your sales process that may be stalling opportunity advancement.
5. Collaborate with your team: Keep your sales team informed about the status of deals in your pipeline and encourage them to collaborate with you to find solutions to advance stalled pipeline opportunities.

Reality testing sales pipeline opportunities on a regular basis, ensures that your sales efforts are prioritized on deals that you can win.

Learn more about effective qualifying and reality testing in Jeb Blount’s bestselling audiobook Sales EQ: How Ultra High Performers Leverage Sales-Specific Emotional Intelligence to Close the Complex Deal

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In today’s world there are few barriers to career change. Top sales talent can walk out of your door to another career opportunity at any time. This puts more pressure on sales leaders than ever before to foster a sales culture and team environment that compels people to stay.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount (People Follow You) sits down with Helen Fanucci author of the brand new book, Love Your Team, to discuss what sales leaders must do to retain talent build and stronger teams through human connection.

In this wide ranging discussion on modern sales leadership you’ll learn:

• The language of sales coaching
• Why sales leadership is personal
• What you really get paid for as a sales leader
• Tactics for 1-2-1 meetings
• How to approach turn-around situations
• How to prepare for a future sales leadership role
• What to do when you meet your team for the first time
• And much more . . .

In her new book, Helen writes that the hybrid work revolution has made sales management the most pivotal role in the innovation economy. Pivotal means that your team’s performance rest squarely on your shoulders. To be successful you must be adept at both implementing and executing a system of sales management AND winning the hearts of your sellers.

Hiring the right salespeople is a huge challenge for sales leaders. This is why we developed the Sales Managers Ultimate Interview Guide. This FREE 25 page guide walks you through a step-by-step process for hiring your next sales superstar: https://salesgravy.com/ultimate-sales-interview-guide/

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

They say you can’t make more time. On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, I challenge you to consider how you can make more time through improvements in sales productivity and reinventing the way that you work.

I want you to take a moment and think back to the early days of the pandemic. You were likely working at home because everything was locked down. 

Then fast forward a couple of months to the summer of 2020. Sales teams were hitting all time records. Many individual sales professionals were selling more and earning more than ever before. 

The secret to their success? They were suddenly more productive.

Sellers were getting more done, in less time, with better outcomes because all of the distractions that typically took them away from high impact sales activities were gone. 

The Three Choices

Each moment of your sales day you make one of three choices about time. You can do:

• Trivial things like watch cat videos. 
• Important things like entering data into the CRM or responding to e-mail.
• Impactful things that generate revenue growth.

The most impactful thing you can do is put new opportunities into the pipeline and then advance those opportunities through the pipeline. If you’re an account manager, you make an impact by expanding and retaining your accounts. 

Impact = Productivity

The equation for productivity is: Efficiency + Effectiveness = Productivity

Simply put, the key to productivity is getting more done, in less time, with better outcomes. That’s how you win in sales. It is also the key to making more time in your life for the things that really matter.

Time Leakers

I’m always shocked by just how much time sales professionals waste.  For example, a recent study demonstrated that salespeople leak two to three hours each day from distractions – little things like looking down at their phone when it buzzes, beeps, or the screen lights up. 

At one point in my career, I was the number one sales professional in my company with a high six-figure income to show for it. I was able to accomplish this by working hard for about 10 hours a week because I allowed no leakage of time. I sold more more, in less time than my peers who wasted an extraordinary amount of time on superfluous activities. This afforded me time to invest with my family and in other pursuits. 

If you take an honest look at your own day, you’re likely leaking time everywhere.

When I’m working with sales professionals on productivity improvement initiatives, I’ll often break their day apart into blocks and demonstrate how they can get their normal eight to ten hours of work accomplished in five to six hours through time blocking, attention control, and work compression. 

Veterans who have a good handle on their territories and pipeline, can do their job in about four hours a day once they learn how to compress work into short sprints. 

Trade Productivity For More Time

One of the big things that we learned during the pandemic is the importance of making more quality time in our lives for family, friends, and ourselves. 

Yet, now that the pandemic has ended, the workplace is quickly snapping back from the days of work from home productivity to trading time for money. In other words, the boss or the company dictates an “8 hour day” or “5 day work week” and therefore we expand our work into those constructs regardless of how long it actually takes to get the work done. 

In sales, at least in field sales, you have much more autonomy with how you manage your time than most employees. Because of this, you have the unique luxury to break free from the time for money handcuffs and begin trading productivity for more time.

If you make the choice to become disciplined with time and your sales day, so that you accomplish more impactful work, in less time with greater outcomes, you’ll quickly make time to do the fun things in your life that really matter. 

Protect Your Career

It is also important to understand how crucial it is that you become more productive in this time of extreme economic volatility. Executives are already taking a microscope to their sales teams, and they’re starting to make cuts. The salespeople they’re cutting are the ones who are less productive.

During an economic downturn, you must work harder, sometimes a lot harder to get the same results you were getting before the crisis began.

If you’re more productive than other people, you can deliver the same results you were getting before the downturn, plus more. This high level of productivity allows you to win while everyone else is losing – protecting both your income and career. 

The Work Compression Model

The formula for becoming more productive is relatively simple. The first and most important step is blocking your sales day into high intensity sprints.

During these short sprints, you’re going to focus on only one thing at a time. It’s all about attention control. Turn everything else off and remove all distractions. 

High-intensity activity sprints can be 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, or four hours depending on the activity or project. The key is concentrating all of your power on one thing with no leakage of time to distractions. 

Territory Management

If you’re a field sales representative, this also means managing your territory better. Map and segment your territory by day then develop the discipline to plan appointments and cold calling activity inside those segments.

Driving is not an accomplishment. It is the often the biggest waste of time in your sales day.  For this reason, just like concentrating your focus within a time block, you should be concentrating the time you spend in your territory each day within one tight geographical area. 

Homework

Now some homework:

• Take an honest, transparent look at how you are using your time – monthly, weekly, and daily. 
• Identify where and how you are allowing distractions to usurp your attention and leak time – including how that device that you carry around in your pocket is negatively impacting your productivity.
• Consider how much time you waste each week driving around in your territory.
• Resolve to start breaking your sales day into the short high intensity sprints. 

You won’t change everything at once. Habits and patterns are hard to break. So begin with small changes. For example, outbound prospecting blocks. 

Tomorrow morning try running this sprint: 15 minutes, 15 dials, with a goal to set one appointment. 

Run the sprint. Take a break to update your CRM. Run it again 2-3 more times. Then move on with the rest of your sales day.

You will be stunned with how much prospecting you accomplish inside of these short sprints. Efficiency + effectiveness = productivity.

In Jeb Blount’s hit NEW Book Selling In A Crisis you’ll learn 55 proven tips, techniques, and tactics to stay motivated and increase sales in volatile times. Download three free chapters here.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Economic winter is coming. Storm clouds are brewing. And with it is going to be a recession. On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount discusses why you need to prepare right now for the economic storm.

This Time Will Be Different

This recession will be different than anything we’ve recently experienced because we’ll also be dealing with inflation. There will be the potential for the long slog of stagflation in some some economies. 

We are still going to have some supply chain issues and interest rates are going to be crazy. If you need to borrow money, it will be painful.

There will be poverty and hunger. People who can’t afford the cost of energy will be shivering in the cold. In the midst of this economic downturn and disruption we’ll be dealing with war and the potential for a nuclear confrontation. 

All you need to do is look at your news feed and it’s frightening.

Get Right With Reality

If you are a sales professional, the big question is what should you do to prepare for the storm right now? 

Helping you to prepare is one of the key reasons I wrote my new book Selling In A Crisis.

Sales professionals are always on the leading edge of the economy. We are going to get hit hardest by the economic storm and we’re the ones that are going lead the world out of this mess. 

The most important thing you can do is to be right now. Focus on what you can control in the present.  You’ve got to get right with reality and reality is, winter is coming. 

This Ain’t Easy Street

It is not going to be easy. A few months ago your phone’s ringing off the hook today. Today, nobody is going to call you.

Therefore, you are going to need to start hunting to find the money that’s still moving. And there’s always money moving. But it’s going to be a tough grind to find it. 

Look around. Half the people that you work with right now won’t be here when we get to the end of this economic downturn. They won’t be willing to step up to the plate and do the hard work.  

This ain’t easy street. That’s why you have to get right with reality. Right now and prepare to work harder.  Start With Right Now Actions

What can you do right now to:

• get your mindset right?
• get connected to reality?
• let go of your need to find Easy Street?
• protect your income, family and career?
• invest in yourself?
• improve your sales skills?

Rather than worrying, focus on the three things you can control. Your actions, reactions, and mindset.  

In Selling In A Crisis Jeb gives you 55 easy to consume tips, techniques, and tactics that are time-tested and proven to help you stay on top when everything and everyone else is down.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recession. Inflation. Stagflation. Stockmarket Free Fall. Energy Crisis. Supply Chain Crisis. Political Divisiveness.War.

We are living and selling in a time of deep volatility. It is more challenging to close business, objections are harsher, and qualified buyers are becoming more scarce.

On this special episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount delivers a powerful message about what it takes to outsell this crisis. You’ll learn why it pays to think like a squirrel, why rainmakers are already digging for ponies, and why you need to get right with reality and put your swimsuit on.

Right now you have to be better than you ever were before, get back to the fundamental and basics, and stay out of buckets with crabs. In this podcast you’ll learn the truth about winning and selling in a crisis.

In Selling In A Crisis Jeb gives you 55 easy to consume tips, techniques, and tactics that are time-tested and proven to help you stay on top when everything and everyone else is down. Read the first three chapters, FREE.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount and Jennifer Smith, CEO of Scribe, give you tips and tactics for working smarter, dealing with repetitive tasks that slow you down, and getting more done in less time with better outcomes.

You must protect your prime selling time at all costs. Time is your most precious resource. You cannot make more, add more, or find more. Do not allow it to be diluted by non-sales activities. 

Time is the great equalizer. Every person on earth has exactly 24 hours each day. No more. The choices you make about how you invest your time, directly correlates to the sales outcomes you deliver. 

Only 6 to 8 hours each day are available for sales activities, that is, prospecting, advancing pipeline opportunities, and closing. Your daily mission is to squeeze as much selling out of these Golden Hours as possible. Sales professionals who protect their prime selling time–the Golden Hours–will get ahead, stay ahead, and win while others lose. 

Your most pressing challenge is keeping non-sales activities from interfering with your Golden Hours. This includes interruptions from customers who use you their Chief Problem Solver. When you make it easier for customers to help themselves, you’ll get more time back in your sales day for selling. Jennifer Smith is on a mission to help you protect your Golden Hours. 

Try SCRIBE for free at: https://scribe.how/salesgravy with Promo Code – SALESGRAVY

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ever wondered how you can get the attention of that elusive prospect you’ve been chasing? You know the one. The big fish that is your ticket to President’s club a huge commission check.

You know how to sell – that’s your job, after all – but getting CEOs and other VIPs to call you back is the tricky part. So what if that impossible-to-reach person weren’t so impossible to reach after all?

Hall of fame-nominated marketer and Wall Street Journal cartoonist Stu Heinecke discovered that he could get past traditional gatekeepers and reach those elusive executives by thinking outside the box and using personalized approaches that he calls “contact campaigns”.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Fanatical Prospecting author Jeb Blount and Stu discuss creative ways to get meetings with anyone. You’ll learn that the secret is about being creative, thinking out of the box, demonstrating authenticity and sincerity, and having a little fun along the way.

Get more meeting with effective Prospecting Sequences. Download our free how to guide here: https://salesgravy.com/seven-steps-prospecting-sequence-guide/

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

If you want to succeed at any job, make yourself invaluable. Go the extra mile; make them never be able to imagine what life without you there would be like. – Ross Mathews

Selling in a crisis is tough. Losing your job during an economic downturn is worse. Now more than ever, you need your income. If you lose your job, there is a much higher probability that you will take a pay cut when you land your next one or end up in a role or company that you dislike. 

No Mercy for Anchors

The good news for you and sales professionals everywhere is that most organizations and their leaders are smart. They understand that in volatile times like this, they need productive salespeople more than ever. Businesses cannot survive without a steady stream of new sales and loyal customers. 

The optimum word here is productive. In a recession, everything and everyone will be examined for its value. If you drain resources rather than generating sales and profits, you are gone. There is no mercy for anchors when the ship is sinking.

How to Get Fired in a Crisis:

• Failure to prospect
• Low activity and productivity
• Lose customers
• Mediocre performance 
• Poor time management and organization
• Wasting resources
• Coasting along
• Quiet quitting
• Making excuses
• Surprising the boss with bad news
• Complaining
• Being difficult to work with

The bottom line is, when your leadership team is faced with making decisions about sales force reductions, the dead wood gets cut first. Therefore you need to be indispensable to your boss and organization. 

Excellence is a Choice

Mediocrity, just like excellence, is a choice. Therefore, the most effective way to protect your job is to make the decision to be excellent. Here’s how you become indispensable and advance your career in a crisis:

• Get back to the basics
• Be fanatical about prospecting and fill your pipeline
• Sell better
• Retain your customers
• Contribute and be a team player
• Volunteer for projects and always offer to lend a hand
• Look for ways to add value
• Consistently ask the boss how you can help
• Come in early and stay late
• Give more effort
• Mentor struggling team members 
• Contribute in team meetings
• Attack the day with drive and optimism
• Be a beacon of light with your positive attitude
• Go the extra mile

Change your way of thinking about work. Devote yourself to your company’s survival. Make a commitment to prove your worth to your boss, company, prospects, and customers every day. Be and become a person that your organization cannot live without.

Going the Extra Mile 

Going the extra mile is powerful in a world where mediocrity is the norm and most people won’t. These things may seem small, but in today’s world the majority of your competition fails in these obvious areas: 

• Showing up early for meetings and being prepared 
• Following up 
• Checking spelling and grammar on your emails and written documents
• Always looking, acting, and dressing like a professional
• Volunteering for special projects
• Coming in early and staying late
• Keeping your word 
• Doing more than is required
• Really listening to your prospects and looking for ways to solve their problems–regardless of the impact on your commission check 
• Taking personal responsibility to ensure that your support team follows through on their obligations 
• Telling the truth when you’ve made a mistake or cannot come through on a promise
• Constantly looking for ways to add value and do more
• A commitment to excellence in everything you do–even when no one is looking
• Being persistent and relentless
• Blocking your time and wading through a massive amount of rejection to find people who will buy from you
• At the end of the day, when you are exhausted, frustrated, and ready to quit, willing yourself to make one more call

There are no traffic jams on the extra mile. When you are there, you will stand out and your career will flourish. 

Jeb Blount’s NEW book Selling is a Crisis gives you the tactics and inspiration you need to stay motivated and increase sales in ant economy. Get it now on Amazon.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Putting Aside Time Every Day to Prospect Will Keep Your Pipeline Full

Kaizen is a theory that developed in Japan after World War II and revived the country, their spirit, and their commerce. It’s similar to what we call “feeding the pipeline,” and involves the art of cumulative prospecting. If you set aside time every day for prospecting, you will find a steady flow of success and less stress!

I recently posted a podcast of my discussion with Kristin Austin, where we talked about the importance of perseverance in life and sales and how you can apply the same theory of continuously moving forward to finding satisfaction and success in both.

Japan was in ruins after World War II, and the nation had the task of cleaning up the devastation and overcoming the hopelessness and helplessness that had taken hold. A movement developed that is now a part of their national ideation to this day. It’s called “Kaizen,” and is similar to what Kristin and I discussed.

What is Kaizen?

Kaizen in Japanese means “a change for continuous improvement.” In this case, it’s a business philosophy rooted in making small progress every day to improve your life and find success. Kaizen is based on the idea that it isn’t so much about the grand changes and ideas that we have; change is found in the small steps that add up to large-scale and lasting habits that lead to success.

After hitting rock bottom, the Japanese realized that thinking about the gravity of the destruction and what they had to do to overcome it could become paralyzing. The same is true of sales. The enormity of hitting quota, closing a big sale, and feeding the pipeline can be overwhelming. This can put many salespeople in a state of paralysis where they miss the methodical and gradual steps to get there.

Why the Kaizen Theory is the Key to Cumulative Prospecting

After Kristin was in an accident that permanently altered her life, she had the choice to either give up and retire, or take small steps to get back to her career, pick up the business she had built, and do what she loved again. It initially seemed like a daunting task, so she took minuscule steps, as she called them. One was picking up the Fanatical Prospecting book to gain inspiration.

Then every day, she would do one small thing that would bring her closer to her goal. She didn’t try to set the world on fire; she set out to make one small daily improvement toward rebuilding her life. Kristin emphasized, “If you are moving in the right direction even slightly, you are moving, which differs from being paralyzed.”

Kaizen and the Pipeline

In the podcast, we also discussed the notion of “feeding the pipeline.” The mistake I often see salespeople make is that they fill the pipeline by prospecting up front, but once the sales start coming in, they stop feeding it.

They’re on a roll, so they aren’t paying attention to the fact that their pipeline is emptying. And when they do notice, they recognize that nothing is coming down the pipeline because it has gone dry. That puts them in a situation where they become desperate and focus on closing the sale, rather than solving the problems that their clients are having and making an improvement in their lives.

Keeping Your Pipeline Flowing with the Philosophy of Kaizen

So the key to being successful in prospecting is not letting your pipeline run dry. Let’s face it: not many people enjoy cold-calling others and asking them to buy something they may or may not want. However, that’s not what pipelining is.

Filling your pipeline means seeking out those people who not only need your product or service; it means finding the people who would most benefit from what you’re offering. When you change your mindset from closing to helping, you increase your satisfaction, decrease your stress, and stop feeling the weight of paralyzing stress.

By taking one small and continuous step every day, or putting aside time to prospect for just one hour a day, you will improve your career, your life, and feed your pipeline so that you can prevent it from running dry. Believe me, we have all been there, and that is not a great or inspirational place to be.

Every Day, Make One Small and Continuous Change That Will Lead to Cumulative Prospecting

I had many takeaways from my sit-down with Kristin, but the theory of Kaizen and the pipeline are especially important – not just for your success as a salesperson, but for your continual growth and satisfaction in your professional and personal career.

“Prospecting is one thing that you have to do that most people don’t want to. When you fill up your pipeline, it frees you up to do a better job. Setting aside an hour every morning for prospecting, which I call the ‘chop the wood,’ has a cumulative impact because it begins to build up like compound interest. The moment you begin to stop prospecting is the moment your pipeline runs dry. The fuller the pipeline, the pickier you can be about your prospects. A little bit every day is all that you need.” – Jeb Blount

Jeb Blount’s book, Fanatical Prospecting, gives salespeople, sales leaders, entrepreneurs, and executives a practical, eye-opening guide. It outlines the most important activity in sales and business development – prospecting. Download our free Fanatical Prospecting Book Club Guide HERE.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

“Life is short. Hug the people that you love and make sure that they know you love them without hesitation. Anything can happen to anyone, at any time. We all live with this concept that we are safe if we can control everything, but sometimes the Universe has different plans. That applies to sales too. Sometimes you think you have a sale in the bag and it all falls apart without anything that you have done. You have to roll with it and keep on keeping on.” – Kristen Austin

When Kristin Austin was hit by a car, her world fell apart. On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast she shares how she climbed out of a deep hole to resurrect her business and life, one prospecting call at a time.

There is no doubt that we all find ourselves hitting roadblocks that seem impossible to overcome. If you are in that situation, Kristin’s story is sure to inspire you to take action and get past whatever is holding you back. You’ll learn how to get back up when life knocks you down.

Life Knocks Kristen Down

Kristin Austin was hit by a vehicle in May 2018. After regaining consciousness, she began two-years of recovery. This required her to rebuild her life from the ground up. 

Kristin owned a business for over ten years that was rooted in marketing and sales; she was a university instructor, a wife, and a mother – and suddenly it all stopped. She was forced to put things in place to keep her business running in her absence and focus on the basics of relearning how to be Kristin.

Kristen Gets Back Up

Forced to stay home and slow her pace, she decided to go back to the basics. Her mission was to get out of her own head and figure out how to get back to the life she left behind out of necessity.

The Fanatical Prospecting Book awakened her spirit because it put her back into a mindset of figuring out a plan about what she had to do, how she was going to do it, and how to get back out there. Throughout her life, Kristin was a salesperson, starting early as a child selling watermelon on Bondi Beach, and moving on to ultimately being a pharmaceutical rep.

The message from Fanatical Prospecting that inspired Kristin was, “If you do the work, the sales gods will reward you.” Once she read that phrase, she immediately got onto LinkedIn and posted about it. And the same day, people responded by coming out of the woodwork to inspire her with words of encouragement to get back up and do what she did best: SELL. 

The More You Prospecting, The Luckier You Get

At her lowest, Kristen stuck in her house recovering, feeling worthless, insecure, and shut down. Then the pandemic presented a surprise opportunity when Kristin took over as head of sales with a new company.

There was still the negative self-talk and insecurity. She focused an important lesson from Fanatical Prospecting: “The more you prospect, the luckier you get.” This inspired her to keep moving forward. 

Some days were really hard, and others were like shooting fish in a barrel – but above all, she was back in the game and this gave her life purpose.

Put in the Work

Kristen’s story teaches us that when life knocks you down, you can get back up. You just have to put in the work. We can all become paralyzed with fear, negativity, and hopelessness – but the trick is to move forward. Kristin, even at her lowest, found the faith to know that if you continue trudging ahead, things will change.

“Nothing happens until you move. Nothing happens until someone sells something. The big lesson I learned is that you have to do something. If what you are currently doing isn’t working, then do something else. Don’t keep doing the same old thing.”

When Kristin hit rock-bottom, she turned to Sales Gravy University, knowing that it might be a small step to go back to the basics, but it was a step nonetheless. If things weren’t converting on a daily basis, she had to take a breath and not freak out. Kristin developed the faith to believe that as long as she was moving forward, opportunities would convert – and they did. If you do the right things consistently, a little bit every day, you are going to win.

To learn more about Sales Gravy University go to https://learn.salesgravy.com

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you willing to do whatever it takes to reach your goals and dreams, build your business, climb the sales leaderboard at your company, or bounce back from failure?

Lot’s of people have dreams but few actually grind it out and turn those dreams into reality. The good news is that you can defy the odds to get everything that you want in business and in life if you are willing to do whatever it takes.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount and Brandon Bornancin dive into what it really means to be willing to do what ever it takes.

No matter who you are or where you come from, your education, or your network, you can create the life you want and build the business you’ve only dreamed about.

Brandon’s journey is all the proof you need.

He graduated college flat broke. He started a business that was an epic failure. Then he turned it all around – before he was 30 – closing over $100 million in sales for Google and IBM and founding two multimillion-dollar companies, the second named “LinkedIn’s Top 50 Startups.”

How did he do it? By doing Whatever It Takes.

Listen above or watch the video below:

Download a free chapter of Jeb Blount’s brand new book Selling the Price Increase here: https://salesgravy.com/selling-the-price-increase-free/

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast Jeb Blount, Jr sits down with author Andy Paul to discuss what it means to Sell Without Selling Out. Together they discuss why it is so important to make selling more human.

You’ll learn that persuasion is not a sales skill. Instead it is a blunt instrument of last resort that sellers use when they don’t know how to influence the choices buyers make.

Get a leg up on your sales career with our free sales training resources. Check them out here: https://salesgravy.com/resources/

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Video messaging is hot and it is a core component of effective prospecting sequences because it works! At Sales Gravy we love using video messages to grab the attention of prospects.

Our favorite tool for sending those messages is Vidyard. That’s why we were thrilled when Vidyard CEO and Co-Founder, Michael Litt agreed to sit down with Jeb Blount, Jr. on the Sales Gravy Podcast to discuss the future of video messaging.

If you are the kind of person that likes to be on the leading edge of sales technology and techniques, you will love this episode!

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this Sales Gravy podcast episode, Jeb Blount and Daniel Disney discuss the real secrets to becoming a LinkedIn selling machine. You’ll learn the keys to to filling your pipeline with qualified opportunities, building your personal brand, improving your closing ratios, and increasing your income.

Why You Should Use LinkedIn’s Marketing Power

LinkedIn is one of the greatest tools ever created for sales professionals. It ranks right up there with the car, telephone, and the internet.

Leveraging LinkedIn gives you the ability to connect with and learn more about prospects and customers than at any other time in history. Sales professionals who master LinkedIn quickly rise to the top of the ranking report.

LinkedIn offers a huge opportunity for salespeople, but it isn’t easy and not everyone was born with the skills to use it. Salespeople need to learn and practice using LinkedIn. It isn’t something that you can jump into headfirst and be successful.

As salespeople, you tend to automatically sell, but with LinkedIn, you have to take a step back from your regular habits. It is all about the long game and building relationships, not quick sales.

You Have To Find The Balance Between Your Professional Persona And The Personal You

Another problem that most salespeople have when using LinkedIn is that they have a hard time finding a balance.

We are so used to using social media in our personal lives that when we have to use LinkedIn professionally, it feels strange and can become a balancing act between being our professional self and staying social.

When you get it, however, it is a very powerful tool.

LinkedIn is about nuance and building familiarity to create awareness for your product, and it is also a direct message tool.

People Have Different Preferences For Receiving Messages That Resonate

One thing to remember is that people have different preferences when it comes to engaging. Some like the phone, some like email, while some don’t have the time to talk and others have full email boxes.

LinkedIn is a different way to reach someone to start a conversation, so in some respects, it can be a pirate’s way in – but only if you use it effectively. 

The key is reaching the prospect with the right message at the right time, and that often takes sequencing your communication so that it is cumulative and encompassing.

When you think about the numerous ways that we now communicate, you can’t just use one channel, be it email, telephone, instant messaging, or snail mail. You have to be the master of all of them and master using LinkedIn’s marketing power.

If you only choose one silo, then statistically you are going to miss prospects. And if you do, you miss building familiarity through a channel and the cumulative effect.

Success lies not in one over the other; it is about using all the tools and being persistent in an authentic way.

Persistence Is The Key To Building A Certain Amount Of Reciprocity

Persistence is a mental skill for people, and it demonstrates that you care about them and believe that you have the solution to help them.

Also, when you are persistent on a genuine level of obligations, you develop a certain amount of reciprocity.

When someone does something nice for you, and you are in the right place at the right time, you are likely to gain their business. You have to blend and sequence all the channels that you have to reach your prospect, which involves cumulative messaging.

People have so many different ways of communicating that you need to hit them from every angle you have at your disposal. Using LinkedIn’s marketing power comprehensively can help you achieve that!

Consistency Adds Cumulative Layers Of Messaging

The key to LinkedIn is consistency. If you walk into a conference room and you stand in the corner and don’t say a word, you aren’t going to make any connections.

If you walk in, however, and you strike up conversations with people, you are going to create connections that will generate business. That is the nature of LinkedIn.

If you show up consistently and people see you more and more, they build familiarity with you and get to know you. It is all of those cumulative layers where every time they see your face or your name, they come to recognize you and ultimately build a relationship with you.

Without consistency, it becomes harder for you to pitch. 

Familiarity leads to liking. The more I see you, the more I like you. It is like a song that you hear; often you have to hear it many times before the tune catches on, and once it does, you feel a connection to it.

We call it LCS – like, comment, share – that creates a connection.

Building A Routine  Feed Your LinkedIn Pipeline

Like feeding your pipeline, LinkedIn requires building a routine so every day you are doing a little bit more to create brand familiarity.

Set time aside like you would with prospecting and feeding the pipeline – whether it is 30 minutes or an hour – and commit to posting. After three months, it will become routine.

Repetition leads to habit and some days are going to be harder than others, but consistency is a must. Putting in the work will be a game-changer.

Curation Can Give You Some Breathing Room From Creative Burnout

Sometimes you can get burnout from creating new content and it can feel like a grind. Curated content gives you some breathing room and allows you to step back and recharge your social batteries. Going completely MIA could jeopardize the progress made.

This is where your professional and personal persona have to balance. Putting more of “you” into your engagements leads to authenticity and diving deeper into relationships with people.

It Isn’t All About Likes When Using LinkedIn’s Marketing Power

We get so caught up in scoring the highest likes, but likes don’t always convert as well as quality. It is about how well you are “speaking” to the audience and giving them something value-added that is relevant to them personally.

Find ways to be creative while still staying within the parameters of your overall marketing message.

Taking Cumulative Steps To Familiarity

LinkedIn is not something that you jump into too deeply. It is important not to get burned out and not to get into trouble. Disclose parts about yourself, but don’t be too self-disclosed.

Whatever it is that you do well, do it on LinkedIn. It is all about being “you” since you are your own brand. When you connect as a person, it is 100% more impactful.

Try not to get into your own head and overthink being “creative.” Sometimes the best engagement is found in just being authentic and genuine.

Good Behavior And Bad Behavior On LinkedIn

There are good ways and bad ways to connect on LinkedIn. The “bait and switch” is one of the quickest ways to turn someone off. It involves sending a connection request with something that is favorable to your prospect, and then going in for the hard sell when they accept.

It makes you appear disingenuous, leading to the prospect feeling manipulated. You wouldn’t make a prospecting call where you pretended to be interested in your prospect and the very next second try to sell them something, so don’t do it on LinkedIn.

As salespeople, sometimes we go on autopilot and all we think about is the sale and close. 

When you switch off autopilot, that is when the real sales happen. Hyper-personalization is the key to creating relationships. The more you make your message about them, the more conversions you will create.

The “Spray And Pray” Campaign Won’t Work On LinkedIn, Either!

Don’t try to lure them in or you will lose them right out of the gate. The “spray and pray” campaign doesn’t work anywhere else, so don’t think that it is appropriate on LinkedIn.

If you remain genuine in your conversation with someone, they are much more likely to grant you a sit-down.

LinkedIn is one of the best sales resources out there to build your brand and create relationships. But you have to be consistent, add variety, and build relationships not sales.

For more tips, check out Jeb Blount’s book  Fanatical Prospecting. It provides you all you need to be a marketing guru, using cumulative prospecting and the channel sequencing you need to get your message across.

NEW BOOK: Jeb Blount’s new book, Selling the Price Increase is an essential handbook for sales professionals, account managers, customer success teams, and other revenue generation leaders looking for a page-turning and insightful roadmap to navigating the essential—and nerve-wracking—world of price increases. Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Price-Increase-Ultimate-Customers/dp/111989929X/

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The buyers in procurement are professionally trained to negotiate. Salespeople not so much. This can put you at a huge disadvantage when you are forced to negotiate with them. But not anymore.

On this fascinating Sales Gravy Podcast episode, Jeb Blount who is the author of the sales negotiating book INKED and Mike Landers an ex-procurement buyer turned sales trainer teach you the secrets to playing to win, when negotiating with procurement.

You’ll learn the keys to mastering the sales negotiating chessboard and going toe to toe with professional buyers who are paid to extract maximum concessions from you.

Want more tips on effective sales negotiation? Then download our free training guide on the Seven Rules of Sales Negotiation here: https://salesgravy.com/7-rules-sales-negotiation-guide/

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this special episode of the Sales Gravy podcast you’ll step into the shoes of a Senior Vice President of Sales.  Jeb Blount, Jr. (A.K.A. JBJ) interviews Ammon Woods who is the Senior Vice President of Sales for Shred-It and Communication Solutions at Stericycle.

If you love sales and sales origin stories you’ll enjoy this wide ranging interview on the keys to high-performance in sales. If you aspire to rise to the upper echelons in your organization, this episode will give you a peak behind the curtain into what it’s like lead a large, national sales team.

Looking for more free resources to help you boost your sales career? We’ve got them here: https://salesgravy.com/resources/

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount (author of Selling the Price Increase) and Donald C. Kelly (host of the Sales Evangelist podcast) discuss how to approach customers with price increases. You’ll learn techniques, tactics, and strategies for crafting price increase messages, planning price increase conversations, and compelling customers to accept price increases without losing their business.

At Sales Gravy we are constantly adding free sales training resources to our growing library of downloads. Check them out here: https://salesgravy.com/resources/

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Most sales organizations and sales enablement teams are actively seeking ways to ramp salespeople up fast on new sales technology.

Likewise, many sales leaders and executives have experienced the frustration of investing in Sales Tech only to see it go unused by their sellers. If you’ve been there, you know that it’s a huge waste of money when sales teams fail to adopt sales tools.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount, Sr (Author of Fanatical Prospecting) and Sean Adams (Head of Sales for iorad), discuss how to ramp salespeople up fast on new sales technology and the keys to teaching salespeople how leverage sales technology to become more productive.

At Sales Gravy we are constantly adding free sales training resources to our growing library of downloads. Check them out here: https://salesgravy.com/resources/

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

 “God, when I cross the truth, give me the awareness to receive it the consciousness to recognize it the presence to personalize it the patience to preserve it and the courage to live it.” ― Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

The number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipeline. The number one reason for an empty pipeline is the failure to prospect every day, every day, every day.

This is the truth. A brutal, universal, and undeniable truth. But, of course, the truth, as the saying goes, is like poetry and everyone effing hates poetry.

A few weeks back, my 24-year-old son was delivering a telephone prospecting workshop to a group of sales development reps (SDRs) who were all about his age. Early in the training, one of the reps pointed out that my mega-bestselling book Fanatical Prospecting, “Was written a while back.” And asked, “Is it even relevant anymore?”

The young, always eager for the next bright, shiny thing and ready to chunk any ideas perceived to be “old.” That’s always been true from one generation to the other.

ANY EXCUSE NOT TO PROSPECT

What is also true though is that sales reps of all generations, for at least the past 125 years, have been willing to make any excuse, and I mean any excuse, to avoid the grind and pain of prospecting. And that’s exactly what this young man was seeking to do.

He wanted my son to let him off the hook. To say that prospecting was old-school, that the marketing department should deliver hot leads on a silver platter and that he could while away the sales day sending asynchronous, automated email spam to prospects on his company’s sales engagement platform and call that prospecting.

Mostly, he wanted validation that “that the telephone didn’t work anymore” and he could avoid talking to people.

My son responded, “What do you think has changed in the past six years?”

The young SRD shot back, “Well, nobody answers the phone anymore.”

At that, my son pulled up his prospecting list for the day, showed it to the group, and said, “Ok, let’s test your hypothesis.” Then, he began dialing, right in front of the SDRs.

In the first fifteen dials, he spoke to four decision makers and set two appointments. Then turned to the group and asked, “Any more questions?”

Cased closed. As Elvis Presley said so aptly, “The truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”

YOU CANNOT BE DELUSIONAL AND SUCCESSFUL AT THE SAME TIME

Of course, there are loud voices, mostly on social media outlets, who shout that cold calling is dead, the telephone is dead, sales is dead, and one form or another of prospecting is dead – depending on which way the wind is blowing that day.

Still others shout loudly from their “holier than thou” mountain top that robots and AI should take the place of people for sales prospecting activity. They argue that allowing these bots to spam stupid humans via email, text, and direct messaging is the secret to all present and future sales success.

It isn’t. People hate robots and spammers. Put these two annoyances together and it only serves to turn prospects off and teach them to ignore generic, mindless robot messages.

“Being loud,” says Mark Homer, in Uncommon Sense, “doesn’t increase the value or validity of their opinion. In fact, often by the very nature of being the loudest, those opinions are typically the furthest from reality.”

The young sales rep in the story above is among the multitudes of sales professionals who are susceptible to these messages that pander to their fear and discomfort with interrupting strangers with prospecting activity.

On a perpetual trip to delusionville and burdened by confirmation bias, sales professionals who believe that they can avoid prospecting seek out any information or excuse that contravenes the truth and gives them an easy way out.

But you cannot be delusional and successful in sales at the same time.

The results are predictable. Sales professionals who avoid prospecting spend their days at the Feast or Famine Amusement Park riding the desperation roller coaster.

• Abandon prospecting.
• Hide behind excuses.
• Complain that the leads are weak.
• Suffer with a thin pipeline.
• Sell from a place of desperation.
• Miss quota consistently.
• Get fired.
• Move on to the next sales job.
• Rinse and repeat the same loser behaviors.

SALES SUCCESS IS PAID FOR IN ADVANCE WITH PROSPECTING

The truth is:

• The more people you talk with, the larger your pipeline will grow and the more you will sell. And talking with people means you need to engage both strangers and existing accounts in conversations.
• If you don’t consistently prospect you will sub-optimize your income, fail and get fired.
• Prospecting is hard work. It is long stretches of pain and grind, interrupted by a few brief moments of elation.
• Prospecting is not blissful, fun, easy or an activity that you are likely to look forward to. It sucks and nothing will make it suck less.
• There is no easy button for prospecting.

In Sales, success is paid for in advance with prospecting, and the rent is due every single day.

Therefore, you must face the truth and make a choice for success or failure. Ultra-High Performance or mediocrity. Losing or winning.

Some salespeople get offended when I confront them with these binary and brutal choices. I get it. The truth hurts and feels offensive when you are lying to yourself. Cognitive dissonance is a painful emotion. But the lies will cripple you.

Never forget that the number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipeline. The number one reason for an empty pipeline is the failure to prospect every day, every day, every day.

In the most comprehensive book ever written about sales prospecting, you learn the real secret to improving sales productivity and growing your income fast. DOWNLOAD THE FREE FANATICAL PROSPECTING BOOK CLUB GUIDE HERE.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

During the holiday season, sales professionals face a host of difficult challenges. The holidays offer a perfect excuse not to go out and prospect new business. It is harder to close deals in December and create urgency with pipeline opportunities, let alone engage and get meetings with new prospects.

And now more than ever, it’s critical to have proper time discipline to reach your goals and crush your number as the end of the year approaches, while also setting yourself up to have a robust Q1 pipeline in the new year.

In this conversation between Jeb Blount (Fanatical Prospecting) and Anthony Iannarino (Eat Their Lunch), they break down exactly how to deal with these end of year roadblocks and truly outsell the holidays.

You’ll learn how to sell more and still have fun over the holidays!

You get specific tips, tactics, and techniques for compelling buyers to act, prospecting, time management, and keeping your pipeline full so you start the new year strong.

Jeb and Anthony will also teach you how to:

• Target high potential prospects who have an urgency to buy now— maybe they have left over budget or are looking for year-end specials for products or services
• Create urgency with pipeline opportunities by using the emotional and business outcome value equation
• Build your Q1 pipeline with targeted lists and daily outbound prospecting
• Develop a daily battle rhythm with high intensity activity sprints and time blocking strategies

Also find out:

How much is too much when it comes to holiday promotions and marketing offers.

Listen to the podcast or watch the video HERE.

You may also want to read: Why Holiday Parties Can Make or Break Your Sales Career

 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This is another episode of #AskJeb where Jeb answers a question, from Justin, a sales leader based in Dallas. Justin asked: “What’s the best predictive indicator of a person becoming a sales champion.”

Sales Champions Are Optimists This is a question that sales leaders all across the globe grapple with because they all want to hire sales champions and build sales champions. The answer is relatively simple, and it’s based on studies that have come from numerous places. It comes down to optimism. Salespeople who have a higher degree of optimism tend to become champions, and for good reason.

Salespeople face a lot of defeat, a lot of rejection, and so many things can go wrong in sales that salespeople who wallow in that defeat have a tendency to crash and burn pretty quickly.

Sales Champs Forget Failure Fast

However, the salespeople who forget rejection fast or forget failure fast and see the next yes, the next opportunity around the corner— those are the salespeople who are more likely to be more mentally resilient. They have a stronger ability to make a shift or be more agile.

They’re the ones that when things go wrong, rather than saying, “Why me? Why is this happening to me?” they’re more likely to say, “What am I supposed to learn from this failure? What am I supposed to learn from this defeat?” Therefore, they continue to grow and improve over time.

So How Do You Find Salespeople Like That?

The key is in your interview process. During the interview, you’re looking for that glimmer of optimism. You need to ask questions about what they have done in the past when they faced defeat. Have them give you a specific situation where they failed and what they did next.

Create A Winning Atmosphere

As a leader, you want to hire people who have a high degree of optimism, but you also want to build that optimism by creating an atmosphere that people want to be in.

That’s a winning atmosphere that rewards people for the good work that they do by patting them on the back and doesn’t beat them up for the things that they do wrong.

Instead, it coaches them when they do things that don’t work out to get better or to learn from that.

Through your coaching and through your leadership, you want to build an environment where you’re fostering and nurturing that optimism because optimism is the greatest predictor of a person becoming a sales champion.

Take your prospecting campaigns to the next level, get into more doors, build deeper relationships, and close more deals with the techniques in our FREE guide, The Seven Steps To Building Effective Prospecting Sequences.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It’s How You Sell That Matters Most

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount Jr. and Larry Levine, author of Selling From the Heart, discuss why how you sell is often more important than what you sell.

Larry and JBJ break down why sales professionals who demonstrate authenticity and empathy gain a clear competitive advantage and what it really means to sell from the heart.

Watch the Video

 

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this #AskJeb, Jeb Blount takes a question from Becca who wants to know what to do when prospects hang up on cold calls.

Getting hung up on can be disconcerting, discouraging, and often feel like rejection. But, they don’t have to be.

Jeb gives you tips and tactics for dealing effectively with prospects who hang up during cold calls.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount, Jr makes his debut with discussion about leveraging the telephone with Alex Goldfayn who is author of the new book, Pick Up The Phone and Sell.

In this insightful conversation, JBJ and Alex make the case that you should pick up the phone and sell because picking up the phone proactively can help you quickly double your sales.

Listen above or watch the video below:

Take your first course for FREE on Sales Gravy University with coupon code FREECOURSE.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This hard-hitting and thought provoking episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast features a deep conversation on the state of sales leadership.

Jeb Blount, author of People Follow You and Frank Cespedes, a Harvard Business school professor and author of the new book Sales Management That Works, discuss modern sales leadership challenges in a world that never stops changing.

With so much data coming at sales leaders these days, the failure to separate fact from hype, can create faulty assumptions leading to poor decisions.

Cespedes makes the point that leaders, at all levels, who embrace data while executing the tired and true fundamentals of sales management are better positioned to accelerate sales productivity and capture marketshare.

Listen to more episodes of the Sales Gravy Podcast

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount, author of Virtual Selling, discusses the power of collecting video testimonials from your customers with film maker and producer Bruce Himmelblau. You’ll learn just how easy it can be to grab these short videos and leverage them to close more sales.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this #AskJeb, Jeb Blount takes a question from Jennifer who is looking for the best times of the day or week to make outbound cold calls. Jeb offers three of his best Fanatical Prospecting tips for timing prospecting calls. You may be surprised at his answer.

Listen above or watch the video below.

Pro Tip: Play this at your next weekly sales meeting.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy