Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Many so-called “sales experts” are quick to tell you that they have the one path to prospecting salvation or the top secret for making sales prospecting easy. Run away from these charlatans as fast as you can!

There is no one way and there is no secret. The key to effective sales prospecting, is adopting a balanced prospecting methodology that spans across all prospecting channels. Balance gives you the highest statistical probability of getting in front of the right prospect, with the right message, at the right time.

Get Jeb Blount’s New Book INKED: The Ultimate Guide to Powerful Closing and Sales Negotiation Tactics that Unlock YES and Seal the Deal

At the strategic level, sales negotiation is like a chess game, but at the tactical level, it’s like playing poker. The parties hide their emotions behind poker faces in an attempt to obscure the strength of their real hand – keeping their cards close to the vest.

The most effective way to get a peek at those cards is to keep your ears open and your mouth shut.

Listening builds deep emotional connections with other people. The more you listen, the more connected your stakeholder will feel to you. As this emotional connection deepens, emotional walls crumble. As the walls come down, they talk more. The more they talk, the more they reveal. This gets you below the surface and lets you access their cards.

Listening is where effective sales negotiators earn their stripes.

Projecting, which is all too common for salespeople, will cost you dearly at the sales negotiation table.

A few years back, my wife and I bought our dream home. It was on a stretch of farmland—exactly what we’d always wanted. We both knew in our hearts that it would be the last home we ever bought. This was where we planned to spend the rest of our lives.

This house, however, had to be completely remodeled. The work was so extensive that the contractor estimated that it would take eighteen months before we could even move in.

Through the years, Carrie and I had remodeled eleven houses. Each time, we’d done the work on a tight budget and made sacrifices with want we wanted so we stayed within budget. This time, though, we had the budget to create the home that we wanted. We promised ourselves there would be no shortcuts and no compromises. We planned to do it right.

After months of work, we were finally finishing up the bathrooms, and it was time to order the glass doors for the showers. The representative for the glass company met us at the house. We carefully explained exactly what we wanted. He gathered measurements and took notes.

Jeb’s New Book INKED Teaches You to Become a Master Sales Negotiator

The last stop was the bathroom in our master bedroom. He collected the measurements and started writing up the order. As he did, a worried look crossed his face, and he shook his head. Then he looked up said, “You know, all this custom work is going to be really expensive. Are you sure you don’t want to go with our standard doors? It will save you a ton of money.”

He clearly missed that the walls and floors of the newly remodeled bathroom had  freshly installed imported marble costing more than $30,000. Rather than up-selling and showing us even more options, he was negotiating down, projecting the size of his wallet on us instead of focusing on the size of ours.

Projecting, which is all too common for salespeople, will cost you dearly at the sales negotiation table. When you negotiate with the size of your wallet, you routinely apologize for your prices, give concessions without being asked, and decide for your buyers what they can afford.

Jeb Blount, the Author of Objections: The Ultimate Guide for Mastering The Art and Science of Getting Past No  does a deep dive into the four objections you face in sales. You’ll learn techniques that you can use on your next sales call to skip past sales objections.

On this episode, I have a conversation with Chris McDonough. He’s a talented and successful sales leader at ZoomInfo.

Chris and I talk about why it’s stupid to avoid objections, how to reduce buyer resistance, how to manage your disruptive emotions in the face of objections, and techniques for skipping past objections.

There’s four key types of objections that we run into in sales. And they’re not what you normally think about. So typically when we think about objections, we think about objections like, “I’m not interested,” or “It costs too much,” or “I’ve got to go talk to my boss.” Those are the things we typically fixate on.

But if you think about sales as a process, all the way from prospecting into closing a deal, you get objections in the deal in four places.

The first are prospecting objections. They typically become the most harsh objections. They’re the reason why people don’t prospect, because these objections can be tough. They can be difficult.

And because you’re interrupting a stranger, they happen really, really fast, and you have to be good on your feet when you’re dealing with these objections.

Then there are red herring objections, and these are not necessarily objections.

They are things that prospects typically say at the beginning of a sales call that have a tendency to derail salespeople inside of a sales call.

So for example, a rep is doing a demo and at the very beginning of the process gets interrupted, then off to the races, the rep goes, getting off of process, chasing down that red herring.

Then you end up burning up the 30 minutes you had for the demo chasing something that didn’t really matter that much. So red herring objections are much more about getting control of the call.

Then there are a micro commitment and next step objections. And these are the objections that reps get when they’re trying to advance a deal through the pipeline.

So where reps really mess up is, and you’ve probably seen this as a sales manager, you’ve got deals in the pipeline that are stalled. Almost every stalled deal in your pipeline exists because the rep didn’t secure a next step.

And the next step is something that’s on the prospect’s calendar and on your calendar. So next step objections happen when you ask the person, “Hey, let’s set up this,” or “Let’s do a pilot,” or “Let’s talk to your boss,” or what have you. Whatever the next step is, you get those.

And then finally there are buying commitment objections, and these are the objections that we traditionally get. These are the sexy objections, if you want to call them that.

Usually they’re the objections that, when I ask for the deal, when I’m trying to close the deal, the person says, “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. I need to go think about it,” or “This costs too much.”

On this Sales Gravy Quick Tip, Jeb Blount reveals a tried and true technique for closing your next sale.

On the final episode of our podcast series on Why Introverts Can Sell, Jeb Blount (Inked) and Mathew Pollard (The Introvert’s Edge) discuss why emotional resilience is a requirement for introverts in sales. Then they reveal the introvert’s super power and how this makes introverts better salespeople than extroverts.

On part FIVE of our podcast series on Why Introverts Can Sell, Jeb Blount (Inked) and Mathew Pollard (The Introvert’s Edge) discuss the pursuit of happiness and why knowing what makes you happy is one of the keys to success for introverts in sales and life.

On part FOUR of our podcast series on Why Introverts Can Sell, Jeb Blount (Inked) and Mathew Pollard (The Introvert’s Edge) discuss a powerful technique that introverts and extroverts may leverage, in emotionally charged situations, to make better, rational decisions.

On part three of our podcast series on Why Introverts Can Sell, Jeb Blount (Inked) and Mathew Pollard (The Introvert’s Edge) engage in a deep discussion about what introvert’s are and are not. You’ll probably be surprised at their conclusion.

In part two of Jeb Blount’s (Inked) conversation with Mathew Pollard (The Introvert’s Edge), the two authors discuss why it’s so important that you understand your energy rules. For introverts to be successful in sales, it is critical that you take steps to protect your energy so that you can be the best version of you.