Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

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.

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

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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...

Lee Salz is back, putting his new bestseller, The First Meeting Differentiator, to the test against real sales scenarios. Jeb Blount Jr. throws three at him: a rep who gets reduced to a price quote after leading with discovery questions, a technical AE who delivers a flawless ROI pitch and still loses what looked like a guaranteed deal, and a rep who runs a great meeting and still gets ghosted two weeks later. Lee breaks down what actually went wrong in each one, why logic without emotion rarely wins a buyer's trust, and why even a strong first meeting...

Tristen is a residential and commercial real estate agent from Flowery Branch, Georgia who built a database of over a thousand contacts through years of relentless cold calling. Now that his pipeline is full of warm relationships, he feels guilty for not cold calling like he used to and wants to know if Jeb went through the same shift.

Jeb's answer cuts right to it: that guilt is cognitive dissonance, and it is a good sign, not a bad one. Your heart already knows the truth. A database built on cold calling decays every single day as...

Ever sent a follow-up and assumed silence meant the prospect lost interest? Jessica Stokes shares a personal story about a caterer who stayed persistent through weeks of unanswered calls and texts, only to land the job days before the event. No response does not mean no interest. It usually means the other person is busy or buried in their own priorities. Jessica breaks down five ways to stay visible without becoming pushy, including bringing value to every touchpoint and mixing up your communication channels.

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Every time you jump in to save a deal, you might actually be making your rep worse at their job. Steven Rosen is the founder and CEO of STAR Results, where he helps CROs and VPs of Sales build the kind of leadership infrastructure that makes coaching and accountability actually stick instead of falling apart under pressure. He's also the author of the book FOCUSED. He joins Ashley Blount to talk about a habit most sales managers don't want to admit they have. Steven and Ashley get into the hero manager trap, the real difference between coaching a deal...

If your sales organization is new and growing fast, the worst thing you can do is hire more people before you have a system for them to run. In this Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers two sharp questions from John, who leads sales for a Catholic nonprofit that is about to double in size through an acquisition.

Jeb's core message is clear: slow down, map your system, then scale. Without a documented sales process, every new hire is an expensive experiment. With one, you can bring someone in and get them producing...

Most salespeople stay busy but struggle to produce consistent results. The reason usually comes down to one thing: they treat every prospect the same.

In this Money Monday, Sales Gravy master sales trainer Duff Tucker breaks down a three-variable prospecting framework built around lead temperature, sales cycle timing, and deal size. These three lenses help you decide who deserves immediate action, who needs nurturing, and who belongs in automation.

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

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

👉 Do...

Sellers often know a deal is falling apart before their leader does, so why do so many stay quiet about it? Helen Fanucci joins Jeb Jr. to unpack what that silence reveals about trust on a sales team, and why forecasts fall apart for reasons that have nothing to do with the numbers. They get into why buyers are harder to win over than ever, why AI is making the trust problem worse, and what leaders unknowingly do that keeps their sellers from speaking up. Helen also previews her session at this year's Outbound Conference, focused on building high-performing...

Should we remove humans from sales?

Shakaib Arsalan, CTO of a software company in Pakistan, comes to Jeb Blount with a question straight from the boardroom: his CEO wants to go fully humanless in sales by replacing the sales team with AI agents. Jeb breaks down exactly why that strategy is likely to backfire, what AI can and cannot do in a sales process, and how to think about the right balance between automation and human connection.

What You'll Learn:

Brad Adams, senior master sales trainer at Sales Gravy, delivers a straight talk on one of the most overlooked problems in field sales today. During the pandemic, field reps were forced to prospect and manage clients virtually — and many had their best years ever. Now that in-person is back, most have abandoned those tools entirely and returned to burning hours behind the wheel. Brad breaks down why that shift is costing field sellers more than they realize, and how blending virtual and in-person communication strategically is the difference between reps who dominate their territory and those who just drive th...

Most salespeople think a great pitch means a polished deck and a well-rehearsed script. Danny Fontaine, author of Pitch, is back on the Sales Gravy Podcast, joining Jeb Blount Jr. to walk through some of the most persuasive pitches in history, none of which involved a single slide. From Elisha Otis dropping an elevator three stories at the 1853 World's Fair to Cleopatra smuggling herself into Julius Caesar's chambers rolled inside a carpet, Danny unpacks what actually makes a pitch land: show don't tell, pattern interruption, sensory immersion, and putting the prospect at the center of the story. If your...

Sean sells a family engagement survey tool to public schools and charter systems, and prospecting is not his problem. His deals are moving through the early stages just fine. But somewhere around stage three, things slow down, conversations keep happening, and the deal stops going anywhere. In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount breaks down exactly why this happens and what Sean needs to do differently to get deals moving again.

The answer starts with understanding who you are selling to. Education is one of the most risk-averse buying environments in...

Success is supposed to be the goal. But for a lot of salespeople, it becomes the thing that unravels everything they built. Once you hit the leaderboard, start crushing your number, and get comfortable, success starts whispering that you've earned a break — that the fundamentals that got you there are optional now. That's where the danger lives.

In this Money Monday, Jeb Blount breaks down why comfort and complacency are the natural enemies of sustained success, what elite athletes like Kobe Bryant, Jerry Rice, and Tom Brady understood that most people miss, and how to do an ho...

Most salespeople think they lose deals in the closing conversation. Jake Stahl says they lose them long before that. Jake is a neuro strategist, CEO of Orchestraight, and author of Own the Room, and he has spent his career studying the behavioral signals buyers send before they go dark. In this episode, he joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down his STRATA framework and show exactly how to read what buyers are really communicating, how to create the psychological conditions that make people want to say yes, and how to follow up in a way that builds obligation without...

AI call screeners are the new gatekeeper, and most salespeople are failing the relevance test before a human ever hears their voice. In this Ask Jeb episode, Cameron from the Raleigh-Durham area asks Jeb Blount how his healthcare staffing team can break through rising AI screening technology and get more physicians in front of clients who need them.

Jeb breaks down why AI screeners and human gatekeepers have more in common than you think, and exactly what your team needs to say in 15 seconds to earn the callback.

In this episode you will learn:

Every salesperson hits a slump. The calls feel pointless, the deals dry up, and motivation disappears. Jessica Stokes has been there. Six months into her sales career, she was hitting her daily call minimum and still falling behind. She walked into her manager's office ready to quit. What he said next changed the entire direction of her career. In this Money Monday episode, Jessica shares the challenge that pulled her out of her slump and the four practical steps she still uses today to push through the hard stretches.

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AI has made it easier than ever to post on LinkedIn. It has also made it easier than ever to sound exactly like everyone else. Daniel Disney, author of The Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide, joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down why copy-paste content and AI-generated messaging are flooding the platform with noise and costing sellers real pipeline. Daniel shares how elite sellers use AI as a starting point without losing their voice, why sales leaders need to lead by example on LinkedIn before they can expect results from their teams, and how to build a social selling strategy...

When the market shifts, your salespeople won't shift with it on their own. That's your job as a sales leader. In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount takes questions from two sales leaders navigating some of the most common and costly team management challenges in sales: how to redirect high performers when market conditions change, and how to get a small team to stop chasing easy transactional deals and start closing high-value complex ones.

Jeb draws on real experience, including a story from the early days of the pandemic when one...

Most salespeople think they have a time management problem. They don't. In this Money Monday episode, Jeb Blount reveals the real reason top performers consistently outproduce everyone else, and the three choices every sales professional faces during the golden hours that determine whether they win or lose.

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

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Jeb Blount Jr. sits down with Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson — co-founders of We Have a Meeting and co-authors of Sales is Therapy — for one of the most entertaining and honest conversations about what's gone wrong on LinkedIn. Jack and Zac have built their careers helping B2B companies fill their pipelines with qualified meetings by doing what most salespeople have forgotten how to do: pick up the phone and talk to people. In this episode, they react live to the cringiest LinkedIn sales posts they've ever seen, expose the red flags of the fake guru playbook, and share what...

What if you are brand new to sales and have no idea whose advice to trust? Andrew Osborne asked Jeb Blount exactly that question, and Jeb called it one of the best he has ever heard on this show.

Sales advice is everywhere and a lot of it is flat-out wrong. Someone who was number one on their team for one year is not a sales guru. A technique that works for one person in one market in one season is not a universal truth. In this episode, Jeb walks through best practices for evaluating whether someone...