Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Here is an undeniable truth: The No. 1 reason for failure in sales is an empty pipeline, and the No. 1 reason you have an empty pipeline is that you are not doing enough prospecting.

In sales, everything rests on putting qualified opportunities in your pipeline. Prospecting is the beginning and the end, alpha and omega. If you don’t prospect, you will fail. That is a guaranteed truth.

Each and every sales day, you must connect with prospects, engage them in meaningful conversations, and convert them into pipeline opportunities. 

The problem is that we live in a noisy world in which those same prospects are being inundated with prospecting messages from dozens of other salespeople who are also attempting to get their attention. 

So, if you don’t stand out, you lose. 

But I doubt I’m telling you anything that you don’t already know. It’s freaking hard to get attention when prospecting, and it’s not getting easier. There are days when it feels like you could be jumping up and down in front of your prospect in a pink bunny suit while throwing hundred-dollar bills in the air, and they’d still ignore you. 

One of the key reasons so many salespeople fail to break through is that their entire prospecting strategy is pounding away at prospects through a single communication channel—typically a series of automated emails sent through a sales engagement platform like Outreach or SalesLoft. 

Sadly, this sledgehammer approach just doesn’t work anymore. Recent data reveals that salespeople are sending as many as eight times more emails today than they did five years ago and getting just a tenth of the results. 

A big reason prospects are tuning out is that AI-powered sales automation tools have scaled email prospecting activity to an extraordinary level. 

In the past, writing a prospecting email involved strategic thought and taking time to craft a message that was unique to each prospect. It was a slow process, which meant salespeople sent fewer but better prospecting emails.

Today, AI engines can pump out hundreds of cold email variations in seconds with shallow, and often cringeworthy, personalization that, more often than not, turns prospects off. And as AI-generated prospecting emails flood inboxes, the sheer volume of this outreach has eroded any impact from the improved efficiency. 

Constant exposure to this irrelevant, repetitive AI-generated crap has left business executives exasperated. They are overwhelmed and have tuned out, turned off, and are ignoring all prospecting messages—good or bad, human or AI-generated.

Most sales professionals today are desperate to find new techniques to help them break through the noise and get attention when prospecting so that they can engage in more meaningful conversations. 

Most salespeople want a bigger, stronger pipeline filled with qualified opportunities. Yet many overlook one of the most powerful prospecting tools right at their fingertips: LinkedIn.

It can be argued that the moment the sales profession changed forever and the door opened to modern selling as we know it was when Alexander Graham Bell said on the very first telephone call, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”

The telephone’s impact on the sales profession was profound and lasting. Then, as now, the phone remains the most efficient and effective means for conducting real-time, synchronous human-to-human conversations with prospects.

Bell made his call to Mr. Watson 150 years ago. Since then, only a handful of pivotal technologies have advanced the sales profession with such impact:

• The automobile gave sellers the freedom to cover wider regional territories more efficiently.
• Air travel literally gave sales professionals wings, expanding their reach nationally and globally.
• The internet put unimaginable data at the fingertips of both sales professionals and buyers.
• Smartphones put powerful computers in our pockets and made communication ubiquitous.
• Video calling shrunk the globe and accelerated sales cycles.
• CRM (we still hate it) made it possible to efficiently capture, organize, and access data.
• Artificial intelligence is transforming the way we develop insight from this data—revolutionizing targeting, prospecting, communication, deal strategy, and forecasting.

But, of all these advances, none has had a more dramatic impact on the sales profession and your ability to connect with almost anybody, anywhere, at any time than LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a vibrant ecosystem where a billion business professionals are linked together. It’s a prospecting and sales Swiss Army knife with dozens of tools and applications for a variety of purposes:

• Prospecting
• Networking
• Research, qualifying, and list building
• Multi-threading and stakeholder mapping
• Pre-call planning
• Discovery
• Communicating
• Building familiarity and personal branding
• Projecting thought leadership and authority

What makes LinkedIn truly unique is that this giant database and sales ecosystem is constantly self-updating. This means that the data and contacts are never stale.

It is the only sales data center where you are always working with the most current information about prospects and their companies, which makes it an excellent list-building tool. It gets even more powerful when you combine LinkedIn with AI and data platforms like ZoomInfo. 

This matters because when prospecting, the better your list, the better your outcomes.

When you consider that the very essence of selling is connecting with people, building relationships, and solving problems, it’s easy to understand why LinkedIn is the most important technological advancement in the history of the sales profession.

To break through the noise and earn attention, you need to ditch the sledgehammer and pick up a multi-function Swiss Army Knife. 

Multichannel prospecting sequences that leverage LinkedIn are that Swiss Army Knife. 

Sequences diversify your outbound strategies with a multi-channel, multi-touch, interwoven-message strategy that helps you stand out. And LinkedIn amplifies the impact of these sequences. 

A multichannel sequence gives you the opportunity to meet prospects where they are and how they prefer to communicate. It also allows you to experiment with multiple iterations and formats of your message to hone in on the one message that pulls your prospect in. 

LinkedIn, when combined with AI and traditional communication channels like the phone and email, can give you almost superhuman prospecting powers.

Sales professionals who harness LinkedIn in their Fanatical Prospecting sequences can transform their prospecting strategy and explode their pipeline with high-quality opportunities by generating more leads, opening more doors, and engaging in more meaningful conversations.

To be sure, LinkedIn is not a prospecting panacea. It will not provide an endless stream of inbound leads with little effort. It requires hard work and time investment, and it must be combined with other communication channels to be effective. 

LinkedIn is, however, a key component of a complete prospecting system. From list building and direct outreach to lead generation and long-term cultivation of future opportunities, LinkedIn’s panorama of features can be a crazy powerful weapon in your prospecting arsenal. 

This is why I want you to stop today and consider how you are using LinkedIn. Do you feel like you are getting everything out of LinkedIn that you should be? Are you scheduling consistent LinkedIn blocks on your calendar, or are you erratic with your efforts? 

Take some time this week to consider new possibilities for how to make LinkedIn work better for you and recommit to making LinkedIn a core part of your fanatical prospecting routine. 

In my new book, The LinkedIn Edge, I give you a comprehensive prospecting playbook. You’ll gain tools, tactics, and techniques for building a robust pipeline with both fast and long-game strategies for landing big, lucrative deals and dream accounts.

Prospecting on LinkedIn can feel utterly overwhelming, so I’m going to teach you:

• How and where to get started.
• How to build better prospecting lists and find who and what you are looking for.
• Develop effective prospecting messaging for InMail and LinkedIn Direct Messages.  
• How to communicate on LinkedIn and conduct more effective prospecting conversations.
• How to get found and generate inbound leads.
• How to generate referrals and warm introductions.
• How to differentiate, build trust, and stand out in a world that wants to commoditize you.

My mission is to teach you exactly how to enhance, elevate, and accelerate your prospecting efforts by blending LinkedIn seamlessly into your sales toolkit. Don’t wait, go get my new book: The LinkedIn Edge.

And here’s a bonus: Once you purchase The LinkedIn Edge, you’ll get access to a comprehensive LinkedIn Course (a $50 value) with 10 videos and a reading & reflection guide. Just purchase the book, and then take your receipt to salesgravy.com/edge to redeem your free course. 

And never forget, when it’s time to go home, always stop and make one more call.

Cold calling terrifies most salespeople more than losing their biggest account. The rejection. The hang-ups. The voice telling you that you’re bothering people who don’t want to hear from you.

Before transitioning into sales, Steve Munn spent nine years as a professional hockey defenseman. As a hockey player, his job was to make life difficult for the other team and absorb whatever they dished back. 

“Part of it was getting punched in the face,” he said on a recent episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast. “If I get a no from a prospect, that’s maybe a bad day, but it’s certainly not as bad as getting a concussion or a broken nose again.”

That perspective shift, understanding what actually constitutes a threat, changes everything about how you approach cold calling. It goes beyond being tougher or having thicker skin.

Most sales professionals will do anything to avoid call blocks. They’ll update their CRM. Reorganize their pipeline. Respond to emails that could wait three days. Anything but pick up the phone.

The problem isn’t the person on the other end of the line. You don’t want to be the one who fumbles, doesn’t have the right answer, or proves you don’t belong in that conversation.

Imposter syndrome thrives in sales because every call is another opportunity to prosecute yourself. Every objection becomes evidence that you’re not cut out for this. Every hang-up confirms what you secretly suspected: You’re bothering people who have better things to do.

That internal narrative is all in your head, and it’s costing you deals.

You can’t make effective cold calls when you’re living in your head. Anxiety, overthinking, or trying to sound perfect makes every conversation feel forced. Nothing bad actually happens on a sales call. Your life isn’t in danger, and a hung-up phone or curt “not interested” barely registers as a problem.

The best cold callers aren’t fearless. They’re prepared mentally before they start dialing.

Find what gets you into the right frame of mind: review recent wins, remind yourself that you’re solving real problems, or call a colleague for perspective. The goal is connecting with another human, not executing a perfect pitch. People can tell the difference.

When someone says “we’re all set” and hangs up, they’re not making a judgment about your worth as a salesperson or a human being. They’re communicating one thing: They’re not interested right now.

The delivery might feel harsh, and the tone might sound dismissive. But the message is simple and impersonal.

Athletes learn this early. Coaches scream. Teammates criticize. Opponents talk trash. If you react emotionally to how something is said rather than hearing what’s actually being communicated, you become ineffective.

In sales, the same principle applies. When you stop taking the delivery personally, you can actually hear what’s being said. Sometimes what sounds like a hard no is actually “you haven’t given me a reason to care yet” or “call me back in six months.”

One of the biggest barriers to cold calling is the belief you must have all the answers. You hesitate because you think, “What if they ask something I don’t know? I’ll look like a fool.”

Here’s what that thinking misses: You have a team.

No salesperson operates in a vacuum. You’ve got service teams, technical experts, partners, and colleagues who collectively know far more than you do individually. The expectation that you should show up with encyclopedic knowledge is self-imposed and unrealistic.

What matters on a cold call isn’t demonstrating expertise. It’s demonstrating curiosity and commitment. 

When you release yourself from the pressure to be perfect, cold calling becomes about investigation rather than performance. 

Most salespeople treat cold calls like a race to present their solution. They barely understand the prospect’s world before pitching features and pricing.

The top performers do the opposite. They ask questions competitors ignore. Instead of, “Can I get fifteen minutes to show you our platform?” try, “What’s changed in your business in the last six months that’s making you rethink how you handle [specific problem]?”

Lead with understanding rather than your product. What are they dealing with that nobody else is asking about? What assumptions are they operating under that might not serve them? 

This approach positions you as someone who cares about their situation while giving you information that makes every future conversation more valuable.

You’re going to lose deals you thought you had won, make calls that go nowhere, and have weeks where it feels like every door is closed.

That’s not failure. That’s the process.

Deals lost today often become wins 12 to 18 months from now. Budgets shift, new decision-makers emerge, priorities change. Every no is simply “not yet.”

If you internalize that, cold calling becomes less emotionally charged. You’re not getting rejected—you’re planting seeds, gathering information, and building a pipeline of future opportunities.

Athletes understand this intuitively. You can’t dwell on the last play. Maybe you got burned. Maybe you made a mistake. Doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do next.

Bad call? Someone hung up on you? Got rejected? Move on to the next conversation. Your success isn’t determined by any single interaction. It’s determined by whether you keep showing up.

If you’re in sales, you’ve already proven you belong by getting hired and closing deals. 

Stop waiting for permission to be confident. The voice in your head telling you to wait, prepare more, or improve is lying. It’s protecting you from discomfort, not danger. Cold calling requires perspective and repetition. The more you do it, the more the worst-case scenario barely registers as a problem.

The salespeople who excel at cold calling aren’t special. They’re just willing to be uncomfortable more often than you are. They’ve done the mental work to separate their self-worth from their call outcomes. They understand that this is a numbers game and a skill that improves with practice.

You can do the same thing. You just have to start dialing.

Your biggest competitor isn’t the salesperson at another company. It’s the voice in your head that convinces you to do anything except pick up the phone.

That voice will always find reasons to wait. More research. Better timing. A warmer lead. These are perfect conditions that never actually arrive.

Meanwhile, the salespeople who are winning aren’t smarter or more talented. They’re just dialing while you’re hesitating.

Silence the self-doubt and dial. Then dial the next one. 

Take your prospecting sequences to the next level, set more appointments, build deeper relationships, and close more deals with the techniques in our FREE guide, The Seven Steps To Building Effective Prospecting Sequences.

Cold calling terrifies most salespeople more than losing their biggest account. The rejection. The hang-ups. The voice telling you that you’re bothering people who don’t want to hear from you.

Before transitioning into sales, Steve Munn spent nine years as a professional hockey defenseman. As a hockey player, his job was to make life difficult for the other team and absorb whatever they dished back. 

“Part of it was getting punched in the face,” he said on a recent episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast. “If I get a no from a prospect, that’s maybe a bad day, but it’s certainly not as bad as getting a concussion or a broken nose again.”

That perspective shift, understanding what actually constitutes a threat, changes everything about how you approach cold calling. It goes beyond being tougher or having thicker skin.

Most sales professionals will do anything to avoid call blocks. They’ll update their CRM. Reorganize their pipeline. Respond to emails that could wait three days. Anything but pick up the phone.

The problem isn’t the person on the other end of the line. You don’t want to be the one who fumbles, doesn’t have the right answer, or proves you don’t belong in that conversation.

Imposter syndrome thrives in sales because every call is another opportunity to prosecute yourself. Every objection becomes evidence that you’re not cut out for this. Every hang-up confirms what you secretly suspected: You’re bothering people who have better things to do.

That internal narrative is all in your head, and it’s costing you deals.

You can’t make effective cold calls when you’re living in your head. Anxiety, overthinking, or trying to sound perfect makes every conversation feel forced. Nothing bad actually happens on a sales call. Your life isn’t in danger, and a hung-up phone or curt “not interested” barely registers as a problem.

The best cold callers aren’t fearless. They’re prepared mentally before they start dialing.

Find what gets you into the right frame of mind: review recent wins, remind yourself that you’re solving real problems, or call a colleague for perspective. The goal is connecting with another human, not executing a perfect pitch. People can tell the difference.

When someone says “we’re all set” and hangs up, they’re not making a judgment about your worth as a salesperson or a human being. They’re communicating one thing: They’re not interested right now.

The delivery might feel harsh, and the tone might sound dismissive. But the message is simple and impersonal.

Athletes learn this early. Coaches scream. Teammates criticize. Opponents talk trash. If you react emotionally to how something is said rather than hearing what’s actually being communicated, you become ineffective.

In sales, the same principle applies. When you stop taking the delivery personally, you can actually hear what’s being said. Sometimes what sounds like a hard no is actually “you haven’t given me a reason to care yet” or “call me back in six months.”

One of the biggest barriers to cold calling is the belief you must have all the answers. You hesitate because you think, “What if they ask something I don’t know? I’ll look like a fool.”

Here’s what that thinking misses: You have a team.

No salesperson operates in a vacuum. You’ve got service teams, technical experts, partners, and colleagues who collectively know far more than you do individually. The expectation that you should show up with encyclopedic knowledge is self-imposed and unrealistic.

What matters on a cold call isn’t demonstrating expertise. It’s demonstrating curiosity and commitment. 

When you release yourself from the pressure to be perfect, cold calling becomes about investigation rather than performance. 

Most salespeople treat cold calls like a race to present their solution. They barely understand the prospect’s world before pitching features and pricing.

The top performers do the opposite. They ask questions competitors ignore. Instead of, “Can I get fifteen minutes to show you our platform?” try, “What’s changed in your business in the last six months that’s making you rethink how you handle [specific problem]?”

Lead with understanding rather than your product. What are they dealing with that nobody else is asking about? What assumptions are they operating under that might not serve them? 

This approach positions you as someone who cares about their situation while giving you information that makes every future conversation more valuable.

You’re going to lose deals you thought you had won, make calls that go nowhere, and have weeks where it feels like every door is closed.

That’s not failure. That’s the process.

Deals lost today often become wins 12 to 18 months from now. Budgets shift, new decision-makers emerge, priorities change. Every no is simply “not yet.”

If you internalize that, cold calling becomes less emotionally charged. You’re not getting rejected—you’re planting seeds, gathering information, and building a pipeline of future opportunities.

Athletes understand this intuitively. You can’t dwell on the last play. Maybe you got burned. Maybe you made a mistake. Doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do next.

Bad call? Someone hung up on you? Got rejected? Move on to the next conversation. Your success isn’t determined by any single interaction. It’s determined by whether you keep showing up.

If you’re in sales, you’ve already proven you belong by getting hired and closing deals. 

Stop waiting for permission to be confident. The voice in your head telling you to wait, prepare more, or improve is lying. It’s protecting you from discomfort, not danger. Cold calling requires perspective and repetition. The more you do it, the more the worst-case scenario barely registers as a problem.

The salespeople who excel at cold calling aren’t special. They’re just willing to be uncomfortable more often than you are. They’ve done the mental work to separate their self-worth from their call outcomes. They understand that this is a numbers game and a skill that improves with practice.

You can do the same thing. You just have to start dialing.

Your biggest competitor isn’t the salesperson at another company. It’s the voice in your head that convinces you to do anything except pick up the phone.

That voice will always find reasons to wait. More research. Better timing. A warmer lead. These are perfect conditions that never actually arrive.

Meanwhile, the salespeople who are winning aren’t smarter or more talented. They’re just dialing while you’re hesitating.

Silence the self-doubt and dial. Then dial the next one. 

Take your prospecting sequences to the next level, set more appointments, build deeper relationships, and close more deals with the techniques in our FREE guide, The Seven Steps To Building Effective Prospecting Sequences.

Here’s a question that keeps startup founders up at night: How does a first sales hire build pipeline and prospect effectively when there’s zero technology, no tools, and absolutely no data resources available?

That’s the challenge Matthew Russell brought to the table, and it’s a scenario that’s far more common than you’d think. Companies transitioning from founder-led sales often throw their first sales hire into the deep end with nothing but a laptop and a “good luck” pat on the back.

If you’re nodding your head right now, you’re not alone. But here’s the good news: Some of the most successful sales teams were built from exactly this position, and there’s a proven playbook for making it work.

When Will Frattini joined his boss Jane in Austin back in 2011, they had zero presence in the market. No reputation, no established relationships, no fancy tech stack. Just two people and a mission to build from scratch.

The first lesson? Your job isn’t to reinvent the wheel or create some elaborate sales process. Your job is to figure out what hook the founder used to close their first deals, then ruthlessly replicate it.

This means getting the founder to show you exactly how they won business. Listen to their calls. Shadow their meetings. Mirror their approach. Don’t try to be clever or add your own spin yet. Just learn what actually works.

Here’s the critical part: You need the founder to be completely honest with you about your early meetings. Will’s boss had the right to refuse any meeting he set. If it didn’t qualify, she’d tell him exactly why. That feedback loop is gold because it teaches you the difference between a meeting that sounds good and a meeting that actually advances the sale.

Master the fundamentals before you try to optimize.

Forget about creating a complex sales process with seventeen KPIs. In the beginning, you need exactly one metric that matters: qualified meetings that convert to next steps.

Will’s early goal was 20 to 30 worthwhile meetings per month. Eventually they scaled that to 60 per rep. But notice the word “worthwhile.” These weren’t just any meetings. They were conversations with real potential that the founder or sales leader validated.

The qualifier matters because it forces you to get better at targeting and messaging, not just activity for activity’s sake. You can’t game this system by booking junk meetings.

Victoria Walker asked how long it takes to build metrics in a niche market, and the answer is simple: You’ll have metrics after day one. How many calls did you make? How many connections? How many appointments set?

But most new outbound teams trip up because they expect instant results, don’t see them, and quit before the cumulative impact kicks in.

The prospecting you do today pays off in the next 90 days. This is the rule of cumulative impact, and it’s why most outbound efforts fail.

Companies start strong, don’t see immediate results, and abandon ship. Then they restart six months later with different reps, different messaging, and the cycle repeats. This is death by fits and starts.

Your commitment has to be ironclad: We’re doing this every single day for at least 90 to 120 days before we make major changes. You’ll make small tweaks to messaging and targeting along the way, but you don’t stop the engine.

Think of it like an elite sports team watching game film. You’re looking for incremental improvements. Last month you closed five good deals. This month you’re aiming for six. You’re not rebuilding the entire playbook every two weeks because the metrics look scary.

D’elvis Huerta raised a challenge every salesperson faces: Prospects who are surprised or even concerned when you call their personal cell phone. They ask how you got their information, and it throws you off your game.

Here’s Will’s brilliant reframe: That question is a gift. It’s a pattern interrupt that means they’re actually listening to you.

When someone says “How’d you get my number?” they’ve stopped what they were doing and turned their brain on. Don’t panic. Just repeat what you said, clearer and slower, then move forward.

Will’s approach: “I got your cell phone number because I’m reaching out to you. I heard on your team that you’re looking to grow into the software space, and what I hear is there’s a lot of noise from people trying to train sales teams. What I’d love to do is set some time … “

My response is even simpler: “I got it right out of the CRM. And the reason I’m calling you is to grab some of your time because … ” Then I go right into my value hook.

The key is confidence. You’re not apologizing for cold calling like a professional. You’re explaining why this conversation matters to them.

Building pipeline without tools isn’t a disadvantage. It’s actually an advantage because it forces you to master the fundamentals that matter: targeting the right prospects, delivering a compelling hook, and having conversations that advance to next steps.

Will and Jane scaled from zero to $3 million in one year. They hired five additional people. They became the fastest growing office in their company. And they did it all without fancy technology or massive budgets.

How? By staying focused on what works, getting ruthlessly honest feedback, and showing up every single day with the discipline to execute the system.

That’s the blueprint for every successful first sales hire who’s ever built something from nothing.

Ready to turn LinkedIn into your ultimate prospecting engine? Discover the strategies that combine outbound excellence with social selling in The LinkedIn Edge by Jeb Blount and Brynne Tillman.

Cicero once said, “Cultivation of the mind is as necessary as food to the body.”

Sales is fundamentally a mental game. Your capacity for understanding your prospects at a deeper level and developing creative solutions that solve their problems—that’s your winning edge.

In a profession where you need to outwit and out maneuver your competitors to win, your ability to think, to truly contemplate and reflect, might be the most underutilized competitive advantage in your sales arsenal.

Yet most salespeople these days are starving their minds. They’re constantly in motion, constantly busy, constantly doing, constantly in front of screens—but rarely thinking. 

We’ve created a culture where being busy equals being productive. Most salespeople spend their days reacting to emails, to phone calls, to urgent requests, to the latest fire that needs to be put out. We are always responding, never reflecting. Always moving, never thinking strategically about where we are going.

William Penn wrote, “True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.”

Think about that for a moment. You wouldn’t dream of going weeks without sleep because you know your body would break down. But you regularly go weeks, maybe months, without giving your mind the silence and space it needs to just think and function at its highest level.

We live in the age of noise. Constant noise. Digital noise, physical noise, mental noise.

Your phone is buzzing with notifications. Your email is pinging every few minutes. Your CRM is demanding updates. Your manager wants reports. Your prospects are texting. Your colleagues and customers are interrupting. 

We have so many things going on at once and so much noise in our lives that it has become almost impossible to think.

All of this noise is killing your ability to think clearly, to make good decisions, to see the big picture, to be the creative and thoughtful professional you were meant to be. 

That’s exactly why scheduling thinking time is so important.

Most people don’t take the time to think because they don’t feel like they can afford to. Sitting quietly and thinking doesn’t feel like work. It feels like you’re being lazy. Our culture has programmed us to believe that if we’re not visibly doing something, we’re not being productive.

Likewise, constant stimulation has become a drug. Silence feels uncomfortable because we’ve forgotten how to be alone with our thoughts.

I passionately believe that we must schedule, on our calendars, time for thinking. No distractions, no music, no TV, no laptop, no phone—just you and your thoughts, alone.

Notice I said “schedule” it. If you don’t put it on your calendar, it won’t happen. You’ll always find something more “urgent” to do.

Taking time to just think is powerful. It slows you down, helps you relax, and frequently generates incredible ideas and inspiration. 

Thinking time isn’t meditation, though it shares some similarities. It’s not prayer, though some people find it spiritual. It’s simply dedicated time for your mind to process, reflect, and contemplate.

The beauty of thinking time is that it can take many forms. 

Find a quiet space like your office with the door closed, a park bench, your car in an empty parking lot, or a corner of your home. The location doesn’t matter as much as the lack of distractions. Start with just 15 minutes. Don’t try to go for an hour right away. Build the habit first, then extend the time.

This is my personal favorite. Take a long walk alone, without music, podcasts, or phone calls. There’s something about the rhythm of walking that unlocks creative thinking. Steve Jobs was famous for his thinking walks. Many of his best ideas came while walking around Apple’s campus or through his neighborhood. The gentle, repetitive motion of walking seems to free up your brain to make connections it might miss while sitting still.

Some of the world’s greatest discoveries and business breakthroughs have happened in the shower. There’s actual science behind this. The warm water and routine nature of showering creates the perfect environment for what psychologists call “divergent thinking.” Your mind relaxes, and suddenly solutions appear. 

Don’t underestimate the power of a long, hot shower for generating breakthrough insights. Archimedes discovered the principle of displacement in his bathtub. The idea to write my blockbuster bestselling book Virtual Selling hit me in the shower. 

If you have a regular commute, turn off the radio, the podcasts, the music—everything. Use that drive time as thinking time. Obviously, keep your eyes on the road and drive safely, but let your mind wander to your sales challenges, opportunities, and strategies.

Get up 30 minutes earlier and use that quiet time before the world wakes up. Grab a cup of coffee, sit somewhere comfortable, and let your mind work through whatever needs processing. I do this every morning. It makes all the difference for how I start the day. 

Regardless of which approach you choose, here are the key principles for effective thinking time:

Here’s why thinking time gives you such a powerful competitive advantage: While your competitors are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, reacting to everything and thinking about nothing, you’re developing clarity, insight, and strategic perspective.

You’re seeing patterns they miss. You identify opportunities they overlook. You’re solving problems they don’t even recognize exist.

The insights that come from thinking time often seem obvious in retrospect. But they’re only obvious after you’ve taken the time to think them through.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stuck on a problem, frustrated and spinning my wheels, only to have the solution become crystal clear during a thinking session. It’s like your subconscious mind has been working on the problem in the background, and silence gives it the space to deliver the answer.

Thinking and contemplating taps you into the amazing power of your mind. The more you practice thinking, the better you get at it and the more ideas, aha moments, and insights you produce. 

But the benefits of thinking time extend far beyond your sales results. You’ll find that you sleep better because your mind isn’t racing with unprocessed thoughts. You will make better decisions because you’re operating from clarity rather than confusion. Your confidence will build because you’ll have a clearer sense of direction.

Relationships will improve—both professional and personal—because you’ll be more present and thoughtful in your interactions.

Your stress and anxiety levels will decrease because you’ll be responding to situations from a place of calm consideration rather than knee-jerk reaction.

The power of thinking time isn’t just about becoming a better salesperson, though you will. It’s about becoming a better version of yourself.

Everybody wants to stand out and grab the attention of qualified prospects. Learn how to cut through the noise in Jeb Blount’s new book: The LinkedIn Edge

Cicero once said, “Cultivation of the mind is as necessary as food to the body.”

Sales is fundamentally a mental game. Your capacity for understanding your prospects at a deeper level and developing creative solutions that solve their problems—that’s your winning edge.

In a profession where you need to outwit and out maneuver your competitors to win, your ability to think, to truly contemplate and reflect, might be the most underutilized competitive advantage in your sales arsenal.

Yet most salespeople these days are starving their minds. They’re constantly in motion, constantly busy, constantly doing, constantly in front of screens—but rarely thinking. 

We’ve created a culture where being busy equals being productive. Most salespeople spend their days reacting to emails, to phone calls, to urgent requests, to the latest fire that needs to be put out. We are always responding, never reflecting. Always moving, never thinking strategically about where we are going.

William Penn wrote, “True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.”

Think about that for a moment. You wouldn’t dream of going weeks without sleep because you know your body would break down. But you regularly go weeks, maybe months, without giving your mind the silence and space it needs to just think and function at its highest level.

We live in the age of noise. Constant noise. Digital noise, physical noise, mental noise.

Your phone is buzzing with notifications. Your email is pinging every few minutes. Your CRM is demanding updates. Your manager wants reports. Your prospects are texting. Your colleagues and customers are interrupting. 

We have so many things going on at once and so much noise in our lives that it has become almost impossible to think.

All of this noise is killing your ability to think clearly, to make good decisions, to see the big picture, to be the creative and thoughtful professional you were meant to be. 

That’s exactly why scheduling thinking time is so important.

Most people don’t take the time to think because they don’t feel like they can afford to. Sitting quietly and thinking doesn’t feel like work. It feels like you’re being lazy. Our culture has programmed us to believe that if we’re not visibly doing something, we’re not being productive.

Likewise, constant stimulation has become a drug. Silence feels uncomfortable because we’ve forgotten how to be alone with our thoughts.

I passionately believe that we must schedule, on our calendars, time for thinking. No distractions, no music, no TV, no laptop, no phone—just you and your thoughts, alone.

Notice I said “schedule” it. If you don’t put it on your calendar, it won’t happen. You’ll always find something more “urgent” to do.

Taking time to just think is powerful. It slows you down, helps you relax, and frequently generates incredible ideas and inspiration. 

Thinking time isn’t meditation, though it shares some similarities. It’s not prayer, though some people find it spiritual. It’s simply dedicated time for your mind to process, reflect, and contemplate.

The beauty of thinking time is that it can take many forms. 

Find a quiet space like your office with the door closed, a park bench, your car in an empty parking lot, or a corner of your home. The location doesn’t matter as much as the lack of distractions. Start with just 15 minutes. Don’t try to go for an hour right away. Build the habit first, then extend the time.

This is my personal favorite. Take a long walk alone, without music, podcasts, or phone calls. There’s something about the rhythm of walking that unlocks creative thinking. Steve Jobs was famous for his thinking walks. Many of his best ideas came while walking around Apple’s campus or through his neighborhood. The gentle, repetitive motion of walking seems to free up your brain to make connections it might miss while sitting still.

Some of the world’s greatest discoveries and business breakthroughs have happened in the shower. There’s actual science behind this. The warm water and routine nature of showering creates the perfect environment for what psychologists call “divergent thinking.” Your mind relaxes, and suddenly solutions appear. 

Don’t underestimate the power of a long, hot shower for generating breakthrough insights. Archimedes discovered the principle of displacement in his bathtub. The idea to write my blockbuster bestselling book Virtual Selling hit me in the shower. 

If you have a regular commute, turn off the radio, the podcasts, the music—everything. Use that drive time as thinking time. Obviously, keep your eyes on the road and drive safely, but let your mind wander to your sales challenges, opportunities, and strategies.

Get up 30 minutes earlier and use that quiet time before the world wakes up. Grab a cup of coffee, sit somewhere comfortable, and let your mind work through whatever needs processing. I do this every morning. It makes all the difference for how I start the day. 

Regardless of which approach you choose, here are the key principles for effective thinking time:

• Breathe slowly and listen closely to your inner voice. Just like a GPS, it always knows where you are and will tell you when you’re on the wrong path or when you’re on the right path.
• Don’t force specific thoughts. Let your mind wander. Sometimes the most valuable insights come from unexpected directions. Your brain is incredibly good at making connections when you give it space to work.
• Eliminate distractions. No phone, no music, no multitasking. This is pure, undiluted thinking time.
• Keep a notebook nearby. Not to take notes during the thinking time, but to capture thoughts immediately afterward while they’re still fresh. Some of your best insights will come in the final moments or right after your thinking session ends.
• Be patient with the process. Your first few attempts might feel unproductive. That’s normal. Your brain needs time to remember how to think without constant stimulation.

Here’s why thinking time gives you such a powerful competitive advantage: While your competitors are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, reacting to everything and thinking about nothing, you’re developing clarity, insight, and strategic perspective.

You’re seeing patterns they miss. You identify opportunities they overlook. You’re solving problems they don’t even recognize exist.

The insights that come from thinking time often seem obvious in retrospect. But they’re only obvious after you’ve taken the time to think them through.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stuck on a problem, frustrated and spinning my wheels, only to have the solution become crystal clear during a thinking session. It’s like your subconscious mind has been working on the problem in the background, and silence gives it the space to deliver the answer.

Thinking and contemplating taps you into the amazing power of your mind. The more you practice thinking, the better you get at it and the more ideas, aha moments, and insights you produce. 

But the benefits of thinking time extend far beyond your sales results. You’ll find that you sleep better because your mind isn’t racing with unprocessed thoughts. You will make better decisions because you’re operating from clarity rather than confusion. Your confidence will build because you’ll have a clearer sense of direction.

Relationships will improve—both professional and personal—because you’ll be more present and thoughtful in your interactions.

Your stress and anxiety levels will decrease because you’ll be responding to situations from a place of calm consideration rather than knee-jerk reaction.

The power of thinking time isn’t just about becoming a better salesperson, though you will. It’s about becoming a better version of yourself.

Everybody wants to stand out and grab the attention of qualified prospects. Learn how to cut through the noise in Jeb Blount’s new book: The LinkedIn Edge

Most salespeople lose a sales meeting before they ever open their mouth. They show up with decks of slides, lists of discovery questions, or AI-generated talking points, thinking preparation is about having more material. 

But while they’re busy organizing, their prospects are mentally checking out—and the meeting hasn’t even started.

Lee Salz, bestselling author and founder of Sales Architects, has observed this pattern for decades. “If you want to win more deals at the prices you want, you need a better first meeting strategy. Everyone says I want to win more deals, so they focus on closing at the end. But that’s not where the opportunities are. The opportunities to win more deals start in that first meeting.“

Ask any salesperson: “If a prospect agrees to meet with you, what do they get out of it?”

The response is usually stunned silence.

That silence reveals the problem. Too many sales professionals approach the first sales meeting with an extraction mindset, focused on what they can learn instead of what they can give.

Think about how you prepare. Do you make a list of questions to gather information? Do you pull together slides about your company, products, and clients? That might feel productive, but here’s what it communicates: This meeting is about me.

When prospects can’t see immediate value in the conversation, they resist. They may decline the meeting altogether, or worse—they show up already skeptical, arms crossed, counting down the minutes until they can escape.

Sales training has conditioned reps to believe that discovery meetings are the foundation of the sales process. In theory, this makes sense: You need information to qualify opportunities.

But here’s the problem—buyers don’t experience value when they educate you. They already have suppliers, vendors, and service providers. Another salesperson asking them to “tell me about your challenges” just feels like more work.

Worse, traditional discovery feels like an interrogation. You’re pulling data without leaving anything behind. And prospects are savvy enough to sense when you’re there to take rather than give.

You already know people buy on emotion and justify with logic. You’ve heard it in every sales book, every training, every keynote.

Walk into the average first meeting, and you’ll see the same setup: a rep armed with facts, features, processes, and pricing structures. All logic, zero emotion.

The result? Buyers nod politely, take notes, and then ghost you. Not because your product isn’t good enough, but because you failed to make them feel anything.

Your competitors who are consistently winning aren’t necessarily better at selling features. They’re better at weaving emotional connection into the very fabric of their meetings. They create trust, credibility, and resonance in the first 15 minutes.

High-performing sales professionals understand that every first meeting must accomplish three core objectives:

1. Meaningful Qualification: Determine whether this opportunity aligns with your ideal customer profile while also helping prospects better understand their situation. 
2. Clear Differentiation: Prospects need to understand what makes your approach unique, but not through feature comparisons. Real differentiation comes from your methodology, philosophy, and approach. Show them how you think about solving problems, not just what you sell.
3. Emotional Foundation: Establish the connection that energizes deals. This involves demonstrating genuine interest in their success while positioning yourself as a trusted advisor rather than just another vendor.

The outcome of the meeting is decided long before you show up. Top performers treat preparation like a competitive advantage. Here’s how to shift from extraction to consultation:

• Research industry challenges and company-specific developments that affect your prospect. 
• Prepare insights you can share that will make them smarter about their situation. 
• Come ready to give first, gather second.

• Open with a relevant insight or observation about their industry or situation. 
• Ask questions that help them think differently about their challenges rather than just documenting the current state. 
• Position yourself as someone who understands their world, not someone trying to learn about it.

• Continue the consultation with additional resources or insights that reference specific conversation points.
• Keep building the advisory relationship with value, not noise.

Everyone has experienced this scenario: working with a service provider who delivers exactly what they promised, on time and within budget. And yet, you didn’t hire them again. Why?

Because of how they made you feel from the first meeting to the end result.

You might deliver perfect presentations with all the right information, but if prospects feel interrogated, patronized, or undervalued during your interactions, they’ll find reasons to work with someone else.

The most successful salespeople understand this intuitively. They focus as much on how prospects feel during meetings as on what prospects learn during meetings.

Here’s the critical insight from Lee Salz’s observation: winning first meetings requires rewiring habits. Extraction is easy. Providing insight takes work.

You can continue treating sales meetings like data-gathering exercises, competing on features and price. Or you can step into the room as a trusted advisor who delivers insight, perspective, and immediate value.

Doing so shortens sales cycles, increases win rates, and builds pricing power. When prospects leave your meetings smarter about their situation, they’re eager to continue the conversation. When they leave feeling like a data source, they avoid follow-ups.

The difference between winning and losing is often decided in the first 15 minutes of your initial sales meeting.

Position yourself as a consultant, not just a salesperson. Bring insight, perspective, and tangible value from the first interaction. This choice determines whether you’re seen as just another vendor—or as someone worth premium pricing.

Your win rates—and your commission checks—depend on it.

If you want to take your sales discovery to the next level, you need to understand how different buyers think and make decisions. Download your free copy of the ACED Buyer Style Playbook and learn how to adapt your discovery approach to every buyer type.

You know AI is transforming sales, everyone’s talking about it, but you’re still staring at ChatGPT like it’s some mysterious black box, wondering what magical question you should type in first.

That’s the reality for most salespeople even now. They know they need to embrace AI, they’ve heard the success stories, but they’re paralyzed by the complexity and overwhelmed by the options.

If you’re nodding your head right now, you’re not alone. The biggest barrier to AI adoption isn’t technical—it’s mental. Salespeople are asking the wrong question entirely.

Most people approach AI like it’s some mystical oracle they need to appease with the perfect question. They think there’s some secret prompt that will unlock AI’s full potential, like finding the right combination to a safe.

They’re wrong. There is no perfect first question for AI.

The real problem isn’t what to ask—it’s how you’re thinking about the problem. Instead of asking “What should I ask AI?” you need to flip the script entirely.

Twenty minutes before recording our latest Ask Jeb episode, I was working on a new training program for Sales Gravy University. I had a slide deck and workbook that needed proofreading, and my first instinct was to think, “Who can I get to proofread this thing?”

That’s how most of us think: “How can someone else do this?” or “How can I get this done?”

But I caught myself and asked a different question: “How can AI do this?”

I uploaded the slide deck to AI and asked it to proofread for me. Fifteen seconds later, I had a response—not perfect, but a starting point. I refined my prompt, asking for typos organized slide by slide, and boom—seven minutes later, the entire deck was cleaned up.

What would have taken me 45 minutes and still resulted in missed errors was done in minutes, with better accuracy than I could achieve manually.

Will Frattini from ZoomInfo pointed out that “You already know how to use AI. You’ve been doing it for years.”

If you’ve ever asked Siri for directions, told Alexa to turn up the music, or typed a question into Google—congratulations, you’ve been using AI. The only difference now is the sophistication and power of what’s available.

The barrier isn’t technical competency. It’s the mental block of overthinking it.

You don’t need to understand large language models or machine learning algorithms. You just need to ask a question and hit enter. That’s it. That’s the profound simplicity everyone’s missing.

Stop thinking of yourself as someone who needs to learn AI. Start thinking of yourself as a conductor standing in front of a symphony orchestra.

You’ve got Claude for certain tasks, ChatGPT for others, ZoomInfo Copilot for prospecting intelligence, Gemini for research—each AI is like a different instrument in your orchestra. Your job isn’t to play every instrument; it’s to conduct them all to create something beautiful.

The apex predators in sales aren’t going to be the people who master one AI tool. They’re going to be the conductors who know when to use which AI for maximum impact, iterating and refining until they get exactly what they need.

This means developing your prospecting methodology becomes even more critical. You need to know what outcome you’re trying to achieve before you can direct your AI orchestra to help you get there.

Stop overthinking this. Here’s your action plan:

Step 1: Pick one AI tool you have access to right now. Your company probably already provides something. If not, start with ChatGPT, Claude, or any of the major platforms.

Step 2: Identify one recurring task that eats up your time. Email templates, research, call preparation—anything that’s necessary but not your highest value activity.

Step 3: Ask the AI how it can help with that specific task. Don’t ask what you should ask it. Tell it what you need done.

Step 4: When the first response isn’t perfect (and it won’t be), refine your request. Think of it like managing a new employee: give feedback, clarify expectations, iterate.

The key is starting with problems you actually have, not theoretical use cases you’ve read about online.

Remember my proofreading example? That’s not just about saving time—it’s about the multiplier effect of sales efficiency. When AI handles your routine tasks better and faster than you can, you free up cognitive bandwidth for the high-value activities that actually drive revenue.

Instead of spending 45 minutes proofreading, I can spend that time on strategic thinking, relationship building, or developing new programs. That’s the real power of AI in sales. It doesn’t replace what makes you valuable; it amplifies it.

Will shared a perfect example: He used ChatGPT to help organize his kids’ toys after a move. He just said “help me” and got a 20-minute action plan that would have taken him much longer to figure out himself.

That’s the sophistication we’re talking about. Not complex prompts or technical wizardry, just asking for help with real problems you need to solve.

The learning curve isn’t about mastering AI; it’s about remembering how to learn by doing instead of overthinking.

While your competitors are still debating what the perfect AI question should be, you can be building your conductor skills. Every day you wait is a day your competition might be getting ahead by simply starting.

The salespeople who embrace this mindset now—who start thinking “How can AI do this?” instead of “How can I do this?”—will have an insurmountable advantage in 12 months.

Stop waiting for someone to hand you the perfect AI playbook. The best way to learn is to start solving real problems with the tools available to you right now.

Change your question from “What should I ask AI?” to “How can AI help me with this specific thing I need to get done today?”

Then ask it, iterate, and watch your productivity soar.

That’s how you step into AI. Not with perfect questions, but with practical problems and the willingness to start conducting your own symphony.

Want to master AI in sales? Get The AI Edge for the complete blueprint on leveraging artificial intelligence to dominate your competition and accelerate your sales results.

Welcome to Grind Season. This week, we enter the most pivotal period of your entire sales year. From now until mid-December, how you choose to invest your limited time will determine whether you end your year strong, hit your income goals, make it to the winner’s circle at President’s Club, and start next year with a full pipeline OR wallow in mediocrity, miss your number, and damage your career. 

If you’re ahead of your goals, this is your time to build an insurmountable lead and give yourself an unfair advantage as you enter next year. Do not rest on your laurels and coast. Grind it out and build a massive pipeline for next year.

If you’re on track, this is your time to accelerate, finish strong, and propel yourself into the President’s Club. 

If you’re behind, this is the time to shift from being defense to offense.

Most salespeople who are going to miss their annual quota already know it by now. They can feel it. See it in their pipeline. Sense it in their gut.

But what separates winners from losers is that winners use this moment as a wake-up call, not a death sentence. 

Stop making excuses about market conditions, difficult prospects, or bad luck. Start taking complete ownership of your results and your future.

Stop thinking like someone who’s behind. Start thinking like someone who’s about to write their own sales comeback story. 

Your energy and confidence level will directly impact your results during Grind Season. If you show up defeated and desperate, prospects will sense it. If you show up confident and focused, prospects will respond in kind, and you will sell more.

But whatever your situation, this is not the time to coast. This is the time to get serious about finishing the year strong.

“Grind Season” is more than just a motivational catchphrase—it’s a winning mindset grounded in the unglamorous, but essential, embrace of this crucial period with intense focus, hard work, discipline, and consistent, intentional activity. 

It’s about ignoring distractions, drowning out the noise, being stingy with your time, and using every moment of your sales day to identify new opportunities and actively advance those deals through the pipeline.

This isn’t about activity for the sake of activity. It’s about deliberately and proactively getting back to the basics and fundamentals of prospecting and sales at a time in the sales year when it matters. 

Here’s the key gut-check question you must look into the mirror and answer right now: Where do you stand relative to your year-end number, and based on that answer, what will be your next move?

To fully answer that question, begin with a pipeline reality check. Your current quota attainment tells you where you’ve been. Your pipeline tells you where you’re going.

Far too many sales professionals look at their pipeline and see what they want to see, not what’s actually there. This is especially true at this time of year when we allow baggage from the first half of the year to remain in our pipeline, hoping that somehow we might close it. But here’s the deal, during Grind Season, hope is not a strategy. 

The truth is, those deals have been dead for a long time. The stakeholders are ghosting you; they never commit to next steps, and most haven’t returned your calls in months. In the words of Sales Gravy University trainer and author Kristie K. Jones, “stalled” is not a step in the sales process.  So start by getting brutally honest and ruthless with your current pipeline.

Too many salespeople are trapped by hope. They hope that inbound leads will be enough, that a few referrals will carry them through, or that their existing accounts will magically deliver new opportunities.

Grind Season is the antidote to this passive approach. It demands a recommitment to consistent, high-impact Fanatical Prospecting. This means establishing non-negotiable, daily prospecting blocks with a focus on creating new opportunities with a vengeance.

The No. 1 reason for missing quota is an empty pipeline, and the No. 1 reason you have an empty pipeline is that you are not prospecting consistently, using every possible communication channel, every single day. 

Once an opportunity is in your pipeline, the Grind Season mindset dictates that you move it forward with intention and purpose. This means confidently asking for and securing clear and calendared next-step commitments in every sales conversation. This decisiveness prevents deals from stalling in the pipeline, which you cannot afford at this time of year.

Likewise, you cannot afford to waste time with uncommitted buyers or unqualified deals. Do not be afraid to ask tough questions and address objections directly, because this process eliminates tire-kickers and keeps your time and energy focused on truly qualified deals that you can close. 

Grind Season is hard. If you want to end your year strong, then you’ll have to embrace the suck and accept the discomfort that comes with hard work and running headlong into the grinder of daily rejection.

The essence of Grind Season is an unwavering commitment to outworking the competition. It’s about the mindset that no one will out-hustle you. 

For me, this means adopting a “blue-collar” approach to a “white-collar” profession—come in early, stay late, face adversity head-on, and always make one more call. Repeat this daily and you’ll gain a significant competitive advantage.

The clock is already ticking on Grind Season. It feels like you have time, but you don’t. End-of-year judgment day will be here sooner than you think. This short window of opportunity will close soon, so you have a choice to make right now.

You can keep going the way you have been and take what you get OR you can decide that this will be the most focused, disciplined, and productive period of your career.

The choice is yours. But whatever you choose, choose it now, because time is running out.

And remember, when you’re tired, worn out, and ready to go home, always make one more call. Because that one more call might be the one that saves your year.

Jeb Blount’s new book, The LinkedIn Edge, will give you almost superhuman prospecting powers that will explode your pipeline and your income. Get your copy today. 

Most salespeople waste their careers fighting over the same crowded prospects. Meanwhile, untapped markets are sitting in plain sight. These are the industries, segments, and territories your competitors don’t take seriously—or don’t even notice. They’re wide open, and they reward the salespeople willing to do the work.

On the Sales Gravy Podcast, I spoke with Nicholas Lalla, an economic development expert who helped bring more than $200 million of investment into a market everyone else had written off. His blueprint for revitalizing a forgotten city is the same framework you can use to uncover and dominate untapped markets in sales.

The best markets are often the ones no one is talking about. When the crowd decides a territory is “too small,” “too tough,” or “not worth the time,” they leave the door wide open. That’s where the opportunity lives.

And let’s be clear: An untapped market doesn’t have to mean a new zip code. It could be a niche industry your competitors dismiss, a customer population they ignore, or a vertical nobody’s paying attention to yet.

If you don’t know much about a market, chances are your competitors don’t either. That ignorance is your advantage—if you’re willing to dig in.

Most salespeople gamble on gut instinct when picking new markets. That’s why they waste time chasing “big name” logos that never buy, or avoiding prospects who look difficult but actually have massive potential.

Top performers take a different path. They go where the data points. Before committing to a market, study the numbers your competition ignores:

Data doesn’t close deals. But it stacks the odds in your favor and ensures you’re hunting where opportunity actually exists.

Numbers tell you where to look. Conversations tell you what’s real. Don’t just study demographics—talk to 100 people tied to the market. Customers. Ex-customers. Prospects who should buy from you but don’t. Even suppliers and partners.

Ask them about their challenges, their frustrations, and the gaps they see. Don’t pitch—listen. By the time you’ve had 100 conversations, you’ll know more about that market than your competitors ever will. And you’ll have built a network of early relationships that pay off down the line.

The breakthrough comes when you stop looking for completely new industries and start examining adjacencies. Instead of jumping into foreign markets, identify prospects that connect to your existing expertise.

If you sell to manufacturing, explore adjacent industries like logistics or supply chain management. If you work in healthcare, consider medical device companies or pharmaceutical services.

Adjacent markets let you leverage existing knowledge while expanding into less competitive territory.

Most market expansion strategies fall apart because of a lack of focus. Salespeople chase every shiny opportunity and end up spread too thin. The result? Lots of motion, zero momentum.

Domination beats diversification. Pick three or four high-potential segments and go all-in. Pour your time, energy, and relationship capital into saturating those markets. That density builds brand recognition, referrals, and trust.

Scattershot prospecting creates exhaustion. Focused prospecting creates dominance.

Don’t ignore what already exists—leverage it. The most counterintuitive insight about untapped markets is that the best ones build on foundations you already have.

Your “legacy assets” might include:

Stop looking for completely greenfield opportunities. Start asking: “What do I already know that could apply somewhere else?”

The fastest path to market penetration often builds on existing strengths rather than starting from scratch.

Most reps make the mistake of focusing only on decision-makers. But ecosystems drive markets, not individuals.

The service tech fixing machines knows which plants are expanding. The HR manager sees where budgets are growing. The facilities lead knows who’s signing leases.

When you build relationships beyond decision-makers, entire communities can support your expansion.

This is the part most salespeople hate: Building market presence takes patience. It’s a long-term play, not a quick win.

But here’s the paradox: when you stop expecting overnight wins, the wins come faster. That’s because you start making the right investments—building relationships, educating buyers, and sticking with markets that others abandon too soon.

Compounding effort always beats chasing quick hits.

Untapped markets aren’t about chasing “new.” They’re about being first. Getting in early. Building relationships before anyone else does. 

Start with your own blank slate analysis. What markets do you dismiss without investigation? What adjacencies exist around your current success? Where could you concentrate effort instead of spreading it thin?

Your untapped territory is waiting for someone smart enough to find it. Stop fighting for scraps in oversaturated markets and start building your own $200 million opportunity.

Want to turn your new market insights into a prospecting machine? Download our Seven Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences guide and learn how to build outreach that cuts through the noise in fresh territory.