Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount (author of Selling the Price Increase) and Donald C. Kelly (host of the Sales Evangelist podcast) discuss how to approach customers with price increases. You’ll learn techniques, tactics, and strategies for crafting price increase messages, planning price increase conversations, and compelling customers to accept price increases without losing their business.

At Sales Gravy we are constantly adding free sales training resources to our growing library of downloads. Check them out here: https://salesgravy.com/resources/

Most sales organizations and sales enablement teams are actively seeking ways to ramp salespeople up fast on new sales technology.

Likewise, many sales leaders and executives have experienced the frustration of investing in Sales Tech only to see it go unused by their sellers. If you’ve been there, you know that it’s a huge waste of money when sales teams fail to adopt sales tools.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount, Sr (Author of Fanatical Prospecting) and Sean Adams (Head of Sales for iorad), discuss how to ramp salespeople up fast on new sales technology and the keys to teaching salespeople how leverage sales technology to become more productive.

At Sales Gravy we are constantly adding free sales training resources to our growing library of downloads. Check them out here: https://salesgravy.com/resources/

The number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipeline. The number one reason for an empty pipeline is the failure to prospect every day, every day, every day.

This is the truth. A brutal, universal, and undeniable truth. But, of course, the truth, as the saying goes, is like poetry and everyone effing hates poetry.

A few weeks back, my 24-year-old son was delivering a telephone prospecting workshop to a group of sales development reps (SDRs) who were all about his age. Early in the training, one of the reps pointed out that my mega-bestselling book Fanatical Prospecting, “Was written a while back.” And asked, “Is it even relevant anymore?”

The young, always eager for the next bright, shiny thing and ready to chunk any ideas perceived to be “old.” That’s always been true from one generation to the other.

What is also true though is that sales reps of all generations, for at least the past 125 years, have been willing to make any excuse, and I mean any excuse, to avoid the grind and pain of prospecting. And that’s exactly what this young man was seeking to do.

He wanted my son to let him off the hook. To say that prospecting was old-school, that the marketing department should deliver hot leads on a silver platter and that he could while away the sales day sending asynchronous, automated email spam to prospects on his company’s sales engagement platform and call that prospecting.

Mostly, he wanted validation that “that the telephone didn’t work anymore” and he could avoid talking to people.

My son responded, “What do you think has changed in the past six years?”

The young SRD shot back, “Well, nobody answers the phone anymore.”

At that, my son pulled up his prospecting list for the day, showed it to the group, and said, “Ok, let’s test your hypothesis.” Then, he began dialing, right in front of the SDRs.

In the first fifteen dials, he spoke to four decision makers and set two appointments. Then turned to the group and asked, “Any more questions?”

Cased closed. As Elvis Presley said so aptly, “The truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”

Of course, there are loud voices, mostly on social media outlets, who shout that cold calling is dead, the telephone is dead, sales is dead, and one form or another of prospecting is dead – depending on which way the wind is blowing that day.

Still others shout loudly from their “holier than thou” mountain top that robots and AI should take the place of people for sales prospecting activity. They argue that allowing these bots to spam stupid humans via email, text, and direct messaging is the secret to all present and future sales success.

It isn’t. People hate robots and spammers. Put these two annoyances together and it only serves to turn prospects off and teach them to ignore generic, mindless robot messages.

“Being loud,” says Mark Homer, in Uncommon Sense, “doesn’t increase the value or validity of their opinion. In fact, often by the very nature of being the loudest, those opinions are typically the furthest from reality.”

The young sales rep in the story above is among the multitudes of sales professionals who are susceptible to these messages that pander to their fear and discomfort with interrupting strangers with prospecting activity.

On a perpetual trip to delusionville and burdened by confirmation bias, sales professionals who believe that they can avoid prospecting seek out any information or excuse that contravenes the truth and gives them an easy way out.

But you cannot be delusional and successful in sales at the same time.

The results are predictable. Sales professionals who avoid prospecting spend their days at the Feast or Famine Amusement Park riding the desperation roller coaster.

The truth is:

In Sales, success is paid for in advance with prospecting, and the rent is due every single day.

Therefore, you must face the truth and make a choice for success or failure. Ultra-High Performance or mediocrity. Losing or winning.

Some salespeople get offended when I confront them with these binary and brutal choices. I get it. The truth hurts and feels offensive when you are lying to yourself. Cognitive dissonance is a painful emotion. But the lies will cripple you.

Never forget that the number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipeline. The number one reason for an empty pipeline is the failure to prospect every day, every day, every day.

In the most comprehensive book ever written about sales prospecting, you learn the real secret to improving sales productivity and growing your income fast. DOWNLOAD THE FREE FANATICAL PROSPECTING BOOK CLUB GUIDE HERE.

During the holiday season, sales professionals face a host of difficult challenges. The holidays offer a perfect excuse not to go out and prospect new business. It is harder to close deals in December and create urgency with pipeline opportunities, let alone engage and get meetings with new prospects.

And now more than ever, it’s critical to have proper time discipline to reach your goals and crush your number as the end of the year approaches, while also setting yourself up to have a robust Q1 pipeline in the new year.

In this conversation between Jeb Blount (Fanatical Prospecting) and Anthony Iannarino (Eat Their Lunch), they break down exactly how to deal with these end of year roadblocks and truly outsell the holidays.

You’ll learn how to sell more and still have fun over the holidays!

You get specific tips, tactics, and techniques for compelling buyers to act, prospecting, time management, and keeping your pipeline full so you start the new year strong.

Jeb and Anthony will also teach you how to:

Also find out:

How much is too much when it comes to holiday promotions and marketing offers.

Listen to the podcast or watch the video HERE.

You may also want to read: Why Holiday Parties Can Make or Break Your Sales Career

Salespeople face a lot of defeat, a lot of rejection, and so many things can go wrong in sales that salespeople who wallow in that defeat have a tendency to crash and burn pretty quickly.

However, the salespeople who forget rejection fast or forget failure fast and see the next yes, the next opportunity around the corner— those are the salespeople who are more likely to be more mentally resilient. They have a stronger ability to make a shift or be more agile.

They’re the ones that when things go wrong, rather than saying, “Why me? Why is this happening to me?” they’re more likely to say, “What am I supposed to learn from this failure? What am I supposed to learn from this defeat?” Therefore, they continue to grow and improve over time.

The key is in your interview process. During the interview, you’re looking for that glimmer of optimism. You need to ask questions about what they have done in the past when they faced defeat. Have them give you a specific situation where they failed and what they did next.

As a leader, you want to hire people who have a high degree of optimism, but you also want to build that optimism by creating an atmosphere that people want to be in.

That’s a winning atmosphere that rewards people for the good work that they do by patting them on the back and doesn’t beat them up for the things that they do wrong.

Instead, it coaches them when they do things that don’t work out to get better or to learn from that.

Through your coaching and through your leadership, you want to build an environment where you’re fostering and nurturing that optimism because optimism is the greatest predictor of a person becoming a sales champion.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount Jr. and Larry Levine, author of Selling From the Heart, discuss why how you sell is often more important than what you sell.

Larry and JBJ break down why sales professionals who demonstrate authenticity and empathy gain a clear competitive advantage and what it really means to sell from the heart.

On this #AskJeb, Jeb Blount takes a question from Becca who wants to know what to do when prospects hang up on cold calls.

Getting hung up on can be disconcerting, discouraging, and often feel like rejection. But, they don’t have to be.

Jeb gives you tips and tactics for dealing effectively with prospects who hang up during cold calls.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount, Jr makes his debut with discussion about leveraging the telephone with Alex Goldfayn who is author of the new book, Pick Up The Phone and Sell.

In this insightful conversation, JBJ and Alex make the case that you should pick up the phone and sell because picking up the phone proactively can help you quickly double your sales.

Listen above or watch the video below:

Take your first course for FREE on Sales Gravy University with coupon code FREECOURSE.

This hard-hitting and thought provoking episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast features a deep conversation on the state of sales leadership.

Jeb Blount, author of People Follow You and Frank Cespedes, a Harvard Business school professor and author of the new book Sales Management That Works, discuss modern sales leadership challenges in a world that never stops changing.

With so much data coming at sales leaders these days, the failure to separate fact from hype, can create faulty assumptions leading to poor decisions.

Cespedes makes the point that leaders, at all levels, who embrace data while executing the tired and true fundamentals of sales management are better positioned to accelerate sales productivity and capture marketshare.

Listen to more episodes of the Sales Gravy Podcast

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount, author of Virtual Selling, discusses the power of collecting video testimonials from your customers with film maker and producer Bruce Himmelblau. You’ll learn just how easy it can be to grab these short videos and leverage them to close more sales.