Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

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

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

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

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

What You'll Learn:

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

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

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

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

Jeb's advice: at the start of your career, you often have to take what you can get and be the best at it, even if it isn't the right fit. As you gain...

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

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

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

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

Jeb's answer: he's made the same hiring mistakes every leader makes, even after building a career on turning struggling sales teams around. Hiring is part process and part gut, there is no magic formula to...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeb's answer to Chris starts with a simple truth: a blitz on existing customers should take about 30 days, no longer. You already know who they are and where...

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

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

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

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

Jeb's core message: you can never let go of owning the customer relationship, but you have to let go of owning every customer problem. When you become the help desk instead of the salesperson, you stop scaling...

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

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

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

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

Jeb walks through the three stages every founder hits when they try to...

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

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

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

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

Jeb's answer is simple: stop treating your job search like an application and start treating it like a prospecting campaign. Nick's rail industry background is the exact expertise that companies selling into that industry are looking for. Jeb breaks...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeb breaks sales down into two forces that both matter: the poetry of messaging and relationship building, and the probability of running a consistent process. He explains why he'll bet on a process person over a "gift of...

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

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

In this episode, sales advisor and author Jeff Bajorek joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down how leaders can push past that response and uncover the specific, repeatable behaviors, from always picking up the phone to making one more call at the end of the day. He also covers why relationship-building looks different for every rep, and how leaders can coach t...

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

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

Jeb's answer to Mike is simple: in most B2B spaces, you never fully give up on a lead. Once a project closes, that...

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

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

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

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

Jeb's answer starts with a simple filter: are these gifts going to employees or to customers? That single question determines whether you start in HR or in sales and marketing, and it changes...

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

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Fred Joyal sat at his first sales desk with a phone and a list of prospects, and couldn't make a single call. Years later, he'd built a business that generated over a billion dollars in revenue. Fred, co-founder of 1-800-DENTIST, joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down the system that took him from frozen to fearless, and why the reps who win aren't the ones who feel ready, they're the ones who act first. They dig into how to build boldness through small, low-stakes reps before you need it in the moments that matter, why role playing is...

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

Jeb's answer to Calvin is that there is no single right contact, there is a buying group, and the job is to multithread the account and reach all of them. His...

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

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