Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

You think you’re being helpful. Your clients think you’re being annoying. Early in his career, Justin Goldstein learned this lesson the hard way. He admits, “I thought that picking up the phone and calling a client to talk about almost everything was the right way to go. I personally hate communicating over email. I’d rather just talk to you and figure it out.”  The reality hit hard: clients viewe...

Here’s a question that’ll keep you up at night: What do you do when your emotions are sabotaging your sales performance? That’s the exact challenge posed by Kurt O’Donnell and the sales team from Joyland Roofing in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They’re crushing it—doing $10 million in revenue with individual reps generating $2 million each—but they identified a critical weakness that could derai...

The second quarter of 2025 delivered some incredible conversations on the Sales Gravy podcast. From discipline strategies that separate winners from wannabes to the psychology of selling that most reps completely miss, here are the five most powerful insights that can transform your sales results immediately. 1. Focus on Activity, Not Outcomes The Problem: Most sales reps get discouraged when they...

Here’s a question that’ll make your blood boil: Why do most sales leaders spend their pipeline reviews asking about dollar amounts and close dates while completely ignoring whether their reps actually have real deals? That’s the brutal reality I see in sales organizations every single day. Leaders are obsessing over MEDIC, BANT, and other qualification frameworks while their pipelines are stuffed...

Ben Hogan, who was arguably the greatest ball striker the game of golf has ever known, taught that if you wanted to improve your swing you should focus on the cause rather than the result.  This was good advice for golfers and brilliant advice for sales professionals. Because in sales, if you want to sell more it pays to become obsessed over your behaviors, techniques and processes rather than you...

You know the drill. The quota clock is ticking, the pressure is mounting, and there’s that relentless urge for a quick win. Every sales professional has felt that impulse to rush the process, to push for the immediate “yes,” because, well, the numbers demand it. But here’s the tough question you need to ask yourself: What if that very pressure is actively sabotaging your long-term success? What if...

That’s the question every sales leader, CEO, and HR department is wrestling with as A I tools flood the market with promises to automate everything from prospecting to closing deals. Meanwhile, salespeople are panicking, wondering if their jobs are about to disappear to some algorithm that can write emails faster than they can type “Dear Valued Customer.” If you’re losing sleep over this, take a d...

Is there such a thing as natural sales talent? Are top-level sales professionals born that way? Do they possess a gift from God that powers their ability to close sales? On this Money Monday, I answer these age-old questions. For the Love of the Game When I was 9 years old, after going to the Masters tournament with my Dad, I cut a limb that was shaped like a golf club from a tree, dug holes all o...

“I can’t do that.” How many times have you said those four words when facing a challenging sales situation? It could be picking up the phone to make that intimidating cold call. It could be asking for the close with a high-value prospect.  If you say ‘I can’t do that,’ guess what? You’re absolutely right. You won’t. But here’s what’s surprising: The solution is simpler than you think.  https://www...

Here’s a question that exposes one of the most dangerous myths in modern sales: How do you set the right pipeline creation target to consistently hit quota? That’s exactly what Maryellen Soriano from New Jersey asked when she called into Ask Jeb. After crushing 134% of quota in her first year selling EdTech solutions—transitioning from owning her own childcare center to selling back into that same...

Have you ever been working on a deal where you had this feeling, this intuition, this Spidey sense—something in the back of your mind telling you that this wasn’t going to close? That you were going to waste your time? Maybe you had one of the stakeholders who was against you—an enemy. There was a naysayer who kept calling you out. Perhaps the stakeholders weren’t engaged, or the incumbent vendor...

Your sales team just closed a $50K deal. Marketing takes credit because the prospect downloaded three whitepapers. Sales takes credit because they nurtured the relationship for six months. Meanwhile, you’re wondering why this kind of success feels so random—and why similar prospects are slipping away. Companies with misaligned sales and marketing teams waste more leads and see annual revenue decli...

Here’s a question that’ll make your head spin: What do you do when your top performer is crushing quota but not hitting a required talk time KPI? That’s the question posed by Josh Robich and Josh Nelson from Nashville. Josh Nelson ranked 18th out of 130 reps in his first full year at a new company, but he was consistently falling short of the company’s sacred talk time metric of 3 hours per day, a...

If you are spending more time staring at your windshield instead of looking into your customers’ eyes, you are doing field sales wrong.  Over the past couple of years, there’s been a resurgence in field sales. Businesses everywhere are adding field salespeople and sending representatives out into the territory to meet with customers face-to-face.  And for good reason—human beings buy from human be...

AI isn’t here to replace you; it’s here to boost your game. Used wisely, AI can be your secret weapon. AI is everywhere: in social selling, content creation, automation, to say the least. Here’s the double-edged sword: If you’re trying to outsource everything to AI, you won’t last. If you’re stuck in the old ways, refusing to adapt, you’ll get left behind. Top performers are integrating AI into th...

If you’re in field sales, you know the reality: You spend hours every week sitting behind the windshield, staring at traffic that’s moving at the speed of molasses. Whether you’re dealing with Atlanta’s notorious I-285 parking lot or any other major city’s rush hour nightmare, that windshield time is either making you better or making you bitter. Recently on the Ask Jeb segment of the Sales Gravy...

Most value propositions stink. They’re boring, generic, feature-heavy garbage that make buyers’ eyes glaze over. And the worst part? Most salespeople don’t even realize their value proposition messaging is hurting them. On this week’s Sales Gravy Podcast , Lisa Dennis breaks down her process for building value propositions that actually work—the kind that grab buyers by the heart and don’t let go....

Jon Buehler from Jacksonville asks: “How do you maintain the consistency and intensity with prospecting? I find myself doing these sprints to get momentum, but struggle to keep that momentum going for long, sustained periods of time.” Jon’s question gets to the heart of one of the most significant challenges in sales: maintaining disciplined, consistent, daily prospecting over the long haul. It’s...

On Sunday, Scottie Scheffler won the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. Looking at the final scoreboard, his five-stroke victory seemed like total domination. But I was there on the ground, and what I saw wasn’t domination. It was something far more valuable for you as a sales professional and has everything to do with success. What I witnessed was a master class in mental resilience. And in this S...

Sales is a trust game. Always has been; always will be.  It’s not about features, price points, or flashy presentations. It’s about conviction. And conviction is born from trust: deep, unshakable trust across four critical fronts.  Ignore even one, and you’re leaving deals on the table. The First Deal You Close Every Day is YOU Before you ever make a cold call , send an email, or walk into a meeti...

Brian Kemski wants to know how to stop prospects from ghosting him. He asks a question that plagues salespeople everywhere: “What can I do about prospects who go through the process, seem interested, and then disappear into the witness protection program after I give them my information?” If you’ve been in sales for more than a week, you know exactly what Brian is talking about. You have a great d...

Your quota doesn’t take a summer vacation, so your pipeline-building efforts can’t afford to either. This is a reality check. Summer is coming fast, and if you don’t get your pipeline positioned for success now, you’ll be scrambling come mid-July. The summer sales slowdown is a documented phenomenon across almost every industry. According to data from HubSpot, prospecting response rates can drop b...

Here’s a hard truth most salespeople never hear: The most dangerous thing you can do is think like an employee. On this week’s episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, business consultant for entrepreneurs David Neagle says: “You’ve got to see yourself above the place that you actually want to accomplish.” The highest-earning reps? They think like owners. They take responsibility for their number, thei...

Tyler Goss, from Tampa, has two critical sales questions: 1) How do we achieve those “crazy” prospecting numbers I talk about in my books? 2) When should a lead become a pipeline opportunity? In this podcast, I break down these answers in plain English. When to Create a Deal: Finding the Sweet Spot There’s no shortage of opinions on when to create a deal in your CRM. Some sales leaders will tell y...

During a practice round at a major golf tournament recently, one of the players hit an exceptionally beautiful shot. A fan in the gallery exclaimed, “Man, I wish I could hit a shot like that!” The player walked over to the fan and said, tongue-in-cheek, “No, you don’t.” The fan looked confused. “What do you mean?” The player replied, “You don’t want to hit a shot like that because that means hitti...