Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Have you ever gone into a closing meeting, a sales presentation, or even a prospecting call with total confidence? That mindset and feeling that everything's going to go your way, that nothing can go wrong, that you're absolutely going to win?

I've been there. I know you have too. It's one of the greatest feelings ever.

But let's juxtapose that against going into a meeting feeling insecure, where your focus is on everything that could go wrong versus everything that could go right. And then, as soon as something does go wrong, everything starts to spiral downward.

There is absolutely nothing that can make or break a deal like confidence.

In this Sales Gravy podcast episode, we're going to explore exactly where confidence comes from, why it matters so much in sales, and most importantly, what you can do to build the unshakeable confidence that closes deals.

The Insecurity Death Spiral

Recently, I learned a profound lesson about confidence.

I was invited to play golf with a group of businesspeople in Florida. Beautiful day, sunshine, great course. It should have been perfect.

Except I'm not a very good golfer. And these guys? They were good. Really good. The kind of golfers who carry single-digit handicaps and talk about their swing plane like it's a science project.

So I'm standing on the first tee, watching them stripe their drives straight down the middle, and I can feel it happening. That little voice in my head starts whispering: "You don't belong here. You're going to embarrass yourself. Everyone's going to see how bad you are."

I started strong enough. Made it through the first couple of holes without humiliating myself. But then I hit a bad shot. Then another. And instead of shaking it off like I normally would, I started fixating on those bad shots.

That's when the downward spiral began.

Every swing became an exercise in anxiety. I was so focused on not messing up that I couldn't help but mess up. My mechanics fell apart. My rhythm disappeared.

By the end of the round, I had played one of the worst games of golf in my life. Not because I suddenly forgot how to swing a club, but because I let insecurity take over.

Now, I managed to keep a smile on my face. We were playing golf in the Florida sunshine, after all. But inside, I was frustrated because I knew what had happened. I let my insecurity about being the weakest player in the group sabotage my entire game.

And here's what hit me on the plane home: That's exactly what I see happen in sales all the time. One moment of uncertainty, one unexpected challenge, and suddenly, a salesperson who is perfectly capable starts spiraling. Their confidence evaporates. And with it goes their ability to perform.

Why Confidence Matters in Sales

In sales, there is nothing that sells like confidence. Nothing.

Buyers lean into confidence. They're attracted to it. They trust it. And because of emotional contagion—your ability to transfer your emotions to another person—you basically take your confidence and hand it to the buyer, who then gains more confidence in you.

Think about it. When you walk into a meeting radiating confidence, the buyer thinks, "This person knows what they're doing. They believe in what they're selling. I can trust them."

But when you walk in feeling insecure, the buyer picks up on that too. They start thinking, "Why is this person nervous? What aren't they telling me? Maybe this isn't the right solution."

In sales, because we can't always control the playing field and because we don't always feel like we should be where we are—especially when we're dealing with the C-suite or high-level decision makers, when we're in super competitive situations, or when we don't really know what we're talking about—one thing that goes wrong can create a cascade of other problems, creating a downward insecurity spiral that is real and deadly.

The Ultimate Source of Confidence

So the question is: Where does confidence come from? Where do you get it?

Well, confidence by its very nature comes from the inside. It's a mindset. It's something that you believe, just like insecurity is a mindset that comes from the inside.

Confidence is mostly created by certainty.

When you feel certain that you can control the outcome, you feel more confident.

When you're in situations that feel familiar, or you're talking about a product, your service, or some part of your offering that you totally understand, you feel more confident.

When you've executed the sales process perfectly and built deep relationships with your customers, you feel more confident that they're going to buy from you.

When you've practiced your presentation multiple times and know it by rote, you feel more confident.

By the way, the same thing works in reverse. Uncertainty begets insecurity.

When you walk into a situation, and you feel uncertain—and this happens to a lot of brand-new salespeople who don't know what to say or feel like they don't really understand the product offering, their industry, or their customer's business—it creates a level of insecurity.

So the answer, if we want to be more confident, is to create more certainty.

Certainty Creates Confidence

Let me give you an example from my horrible, awful, terrible round of golf.

In the middle of that terrible round, I got desperate for anything that would give me confidence. So I started playing entire holes with my 7-iron because that was the one club I felt I was certain I could hit.

Except for putting, I would hit the 7-iron off the tee, on the fairway, and chip with it around the green. 150 yards at a time with my 7-iron, I could make it go straight down the fairway and hit the green.

That certainty in that particular club helped me feel more confident, and my game actually improved when I stuck with what I knew worked.

Now, in sales like golf, there is nothing you can be 100% certain about, simply because there are too many variables. We're dealing with human beings, nasty competitors, and a shifting landscape. Even in accounts that are in our pipeline, things are always changing.

So for us as sales professionals, there's no absolute certainty. But there are ways you can boost certainty in order to gain more confidence.

Four Ways to Create Certainty and Boost Confidence

1. Invest in Yourself Through Education

If you get insecure when you're talking about things in your industry or about your product that you don't understand, then go educate yourself.

Take the time to learn. Take classes. Go to your LMS and take e-learning. Read everything about your product. Become an expert—not just in your product, but in your industry.

Also, learn about business. The more you can educate yourself about business, the more you gain business acumen, which makes you feel more confident in conversations with executives.

When you know your stuff cold, understand your product inside and out, and can speak intelligently about your industry and your customer's business challenges, uncertainty evaporates, and with it, goes insecurity.

2. Plan Every Single Call

Winging it is wickedly stupid on sales calls because when you wing it, you create uncertainty.

So sit down and think about every single call.

What am I going to do?

What questions am I going to ask?

What's my objective for being there?

What am I going to close for at the end (targeted next step)?

Build a plan, write it down, and review it in advance of your meeting. Planning creates certainty.

3. Murder Board Your Big Meetings

Along with planning comes the concept of murder boarding, red teaming, or scenario playing. Murder boarding creates certainty around handling the unexpected.

Especially in large presentations and closing calls, you need to start pulling the thread on everything that could possibly go wrong. Every objection you could get. Every pushback. Every hard question.

Think about the different stakeholders who are going to be around the table, and the types of questions they're going to ask, and the potential things they may say. Then find somebody on your team or somebody in your household to role-play all those scenarios with.

I've found that nothing gives me more confidence in big sales meetings than murder boarding. Because when I get into those situations—especially with objections or negotiations that can be super intimidating—the more I role-play those things, the better I am at them and the easier they are to deal with. In fact, they're far less difficult in real life than they were in the role-playing.

4. Keep a Full Pipeline

This is powerful: There's nothing that makes you more confident than being able to sell like you don't have to sell.

When you are fanatical about prospecting and build a full pipeline, it gives you lots of options. You know you can walk away from anything. You're detached from the outcome.

When it doesn't make a difference if you win or lose, you gain immense confidence, which is why a full pipeline is the ultimate confidence builder.

With Confidence, Mindset Matters

When it comes to confidence, mindset matters. If you are obsessed with how you might fail or what you might do wrong, there's a tendency to get the thing you're focused on. It's called target obsession. Whatever we focus on, we tend to attract and move toward. So be careful what you're focused on.

One of the things I do—and I know this is kind of weird, but it works—is before I walk into a sales meeting, I look into the mirror and tell myself, "I'm a great salesperson."

I actually say the words out loud. It's a little bit cheesy. But by saying those words, changing my body language, pushing my shoulders up, my chin out—the power pose, as some would say—that actually begins to change my mindset and makes me feel more confident.

Add to that eating well,

You are on slide 34 when the CFO’s phone buzzes. She glances down. The VP to her left is nodding, but you can tell he checked out ten minutes ago. You know this pitch cold. You have rehearsed it. You built the deck. You covered every feature, every capability, every objection. And still, you are dying up there.

You spent weeks on this presentation. None of it matters because everyone in that room has already sat through the same pitch from three other vendors this month.

“Pitching sucks,” says Danny Fontaine, author of Pitch, on an episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast. “It sucks for the people doing it because we get so stressed out, and we spend weeks doing mountains of work. Meanwhile, there is a whole audience who has just as bad of a time as us because they have to sit through an hour of 100 PowerPoint slides and they’re bored.”

He is right. The audience suffers just as much. They sit through identical presentations, back to back, trying to remember which vendor said what. Both sides leave exhausted. No one wins.

There is a better way. Effective sales pitch techniques don’t rely on slides. They create engagement, tell stories, and turn monologues into conversations that actually move deals forward.

Why Traditional Pitches Fail

The standard pitch follows the same predictable pattern. Company overview. Capabilities. Case studies. Pricing. Questions at the end. Every competitor uses the same structure. That means you are asking your prospect to choose between nearly identical presentations.

When everything looks the same, decision makers default to price or familiarity. Your carefully crafted message gets lost in the noise.

You are treating the pitch like a presentation when it should be a conversation. You are trying to inform when you should be persuading.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h7RqBuThf0

Experience Beats Information

In 1979, a small advertising agency called Allen Brady and Marsh (ABM) competed against industry giant Saatchi & Saatchi for the British Rail account. ABM’s founder, Peter Marsh, knew he couldn’t win by playing it safe.

When the British Rail executives arrived for the pitch, no one answered the door. They rang the buzzer three times before it finally opened, with no one behind it. The receptionist ignored them while filing her nails. The waiting area was filthy. After a while of being dismissed, the chairman stood up to leave.

That is when Marsh burst through the doors and said, “Gentlemen, you have just experienced what your customers go through every single day. Shall we see what we can do to put it right?”

ABM won the account. And it worked because the executives didn’t just understand the problem. They felt it.

Most sales pitches fail because they ask buyers to care before they are emotionally engaged. Information alone doesn’t create urgency—experience does.

Start With Them, Not You

Pitches always start the same: ‘Thanks for your time. Here’s our agenda. Let me tell you about our company.’

Your prospect stops listening after the first sentence.

If you want engagement, start with a question. Ask what matters to them. Ask what would make the time valuable. Ask what problem they are trying to solve.

Before you show a single slide, say something like, “Before we start, what would make this conversation worth your time today?” Or, “What is the biggest challenge you are facing with this right now?”

Those questions do three things immediately. They show respect. They give you intelligence. And they turn the pitch into a conversation from the first minute.

This works even better over Zoom, where attention is fragile and distractions are everywhere. When you ask early questions, you pull people in instead of competing with their inbox.

Stories Create Memory

The most powerful stories aren’t pulled from case studies. They come from real life. Every meaningful achievement involves obstacles. Those obstacles contain lessons. Those lessons connect directly to the challenges your prospects are facing.

A story without relevance is just noise. A story with a clear lesson becomes a lever.

A consultant once shared a story about buying a secondhand Lego set. She started building it, only to discover key pieces were missing. After hours of searching for replacements, she had to start over. When pitching a complex implementation, she said, “That taught me something. At the beginning of any project, we have to make sure all the pieces are in the bag.”

That story worked because it made preparation tangible. It made risk visible. It connected emotionally and logically.

If the story does not clearly support the point you are making, don’t tell it.

Ask Before You Lose Them

Most salespeople cling to their script even when they can see the room drifting away. They are afraid of losing control, so they keep talking.

That is how you lose the deal.

Don’t wait until the Q&A to ask questions. Sprinkle them throughout your pitch to keep your audience engaged and the conversation alive.

Ask if you’re hitting the mark, what they want to explore deeper, and what matters most to them.

When you ask questions, you aren’t giving up control. You are gaining it. The person asking the questions is always in control of the conversation.

Emotion First, Logic Second

Buyers like to believe they are rational. They are not. Emotion drives decisions. Logic justifies them.

If you want someone to care, you have to make them feel something. Frustration. Relief. Possibility. Urgency.

That is why the British Rail experience worked. Marsh didn’t argue that customer service was bad. He made them experience it. The feeling came first. The logic followed.

Once a buyer is emotionally engaged, they start looking for reasons to say yes. They look for data to support the decision they already want to make.

This is why information-first pitches fall flat. You are asking people to care before you have given them a reason to.

Create the emotional connection first. Then give them the facts.

When the Room Goes Cold

Even the best sales pitch techniques don’t work every time. Sometimes the wrong people show up, there is a fire you didn’t know about, or your message just doesn’t land.

When that happens, don’t push harder. Pivot. Call it out. Ask what would be more valuable. Acknowledge the moment instead of pretending it is not happening.

That level of honesty builds trust. It shows you are there to solve a problem, not deliver a performance.

Why This Matters

Your prospect didn’t show up to be entertained or to be bored.

When you give them an experience they didn’t expect, you separate yourself from every competitor running the same tired deck. You become memorable. You become relevant. You become human.

The pitch that feels risky is usually the one that wins. The personal story. The direct question. The willingness to have a real conversation.

Because the alternative is being forgotten the moment you leave the room, no matter how many slides you showed.

Want to take your pitch from forgettable to unforgettable? Download the FREE A.C.E.D. Buyer Style Playbook, which shows you exactly how to read your buyers, adapt your approach, and turn every conversation into a deal-closing opportunity.

Here's a question I get asked all the time: What's the single biggest misconception holding salespeople back?

That question came from a room full of college students at BYU-Idaho, ages 19 to 24, all exploring sales careers. And my answer is the same whether you're just starting out or you've been in the game for decades.

The biggest lie about selling is this: Good salespeople have the gift of gab.

You know the stereotype. The smooth talker. The fast-talking closer. The person who can talk their way into or out of anything. We've all seen it in movies, TV shows, and plays like Death of a Salesman. It's been around for a century, and it's completely wrong.

The Truth Top Performers Know

Here's what the best salespeople actually do: They listen.

The greatest salespeople aren't the best talkers. They're the best listeners. They're individuals who know how to ask the right questions and know how to ask questions in a way that create these aha moments for prospects and customers.

They understand something fundamental that average performers miss: Closing happens in the discovery process, not at some magical point where you lay the hammer down and ask for a sale.

Think about that for a second. The deal isn't won when you deliver your polished presentation. It's not won when you overcome the final objection. It's won in those early conversations when you're asking questions, uncovering pain, and building relationships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6xiSz9dGkI

Why the Stereotype Persists

The negative stereotype of salespeople has been pervasive in society for generations. Part of it's because no one really likes to be sold. And there are salespeople who are bad. They talk at people instead of actually taking the time to listen.

But here's the reality: Lots of professions have negative stereotypes. Lawyers. Politicians. Salespeople aren't the worst of them.

And here's the good side of that negative stereotype: Nobody wants to be in sales. So if you're in sales, you're making a whole lot more money than anybody else. That's a good thing.

The people who look at the profession of selling and say, "I could never do that" or "I could never interrupt people or take that type of rejection," are the same people who will never experience the income, freedom, and impact that comes with being great at sales.

The Power of Questions

When you shift your mindset from talking to listening, everything changes. Instead of thinking about what you're going to say next, you're focused on what your prospect is telling you.

You're asking questions like:

What's driving this decision right now?

What happens if you don't solve this problem?

Who else is involved in this decision?

What does success look like for you?

These aren't manipulative tricks. They're genuine attempts to understand your prospect's world, their challenges, and their goals. And when you do that well, you create trust. You build relationships. You position yourself as a partner, not a vendor.

The discovery questions you ask matter more than any pitch you could ever deliver. Handling objections starts with asking the right questions early in the process.

Who's Really in Control

Here's the truth: The person in control of the conversation is rarely the talker. In fact, it's almost always the listener.

If you want to move deals, stop performing and start discovering. Build your calls around three things: smart opening questions, deep follow-ups, and crisp advances to the next step.

You'll gain insights, not just airtime. And insights are what close deals.

Success in sales isn't about being the loudest voice in the room. It's about being the most curious, the most engaged, and the most intentional about moving the sale forward.

What You Need to Unlearn Right Now

If you've been operating under the assumption that you need to be a great talker to succeed in sales, unlearn that immediately.

Replace it with this truth: You need to be a great asker and an even better listener.

Your job isn't to convince people. Your job is to help people convince themselves by asking questions that lead them to their own conclusions. When prospects discover the solution themselves through your questioning, they own it. They believe it. And they buy.

That's the relationship you build through asking questions. That matters the most.

The Bottom Line

Stop trying to out-talk your prospects. Stop preparing 47-slide presentations. Stop thinking that your job is to educate and inform.

Your job is to discover. To listen. To understand. To ask the questions that help your prospects see clearly what they need to do next.

The best salespeople aren't the smooth talkers. They're the smart listeners who know that the power of the sale is in the questions they ask, not the words they say.

If you master this one fundamental truth, you'll close more deals than all the gift-of-gab salespeople combined. And you'll build a career based on relationships, trust, and value instead of pressure, manipulation, and empty talk.

That's how you win in sales. That's how you build lasting customer relationships. And that's how you separate yourself from everyone else who's still chasing the lie.

Visit salesgravy.com/live to see all of our upcoming virtual and in-person events.

You declined another prospecting block today, didn't you?

That internal meeting popped up. Someone needed "just five minutes." Your CRM screamed for attention. Before you knew it, another day passed without a single cold call, without one new connection request, without moving the needle on your pipeline. But hey, at least your calendar looked impressively full.

Here's what nobody wants to admit: your jam-packed calendar isn't proof that you're too busy to prospect. It's proof you've made prospecting optional. And optional activities don't close deals or pay commissions.

The Meeting Excuse Is Killing Your Pipeline

Sales professionals love to point at their calendars as evidence of why they can't prospect. Look at all these internal meetings. See how packed my schedule is. How could I possibly find time for outbound activity?

The real question is: when did you last decline an internal meeting to protect your prospecting time? Most salespeople never have. They treat every meeting invitation as a welcome escape from the discomfort of cold outreach. It's the perfect alibi when your manager asks about pipeline activity.

But your calendar tells the truth about your priorities. If time blocking for prospecting isn't on it, prospecting isn't actually a priority. And if prospecting isn't a priority, why exactly are you in sales?

You Don't Need Hours—You Need 15 Minutes

The biggest lie salespeople tell themselves is that prospecting requires massive blocks of uninterrupted time. Two hours minimum. Otherwise, why bother starting?

This is the same mental trap that keeps people from reading, exercising, or learning new skills. They convince themselves that 15 minutes isn't enough to matter, so they do nothing instead.

Consider this: reading for 15 minutes daily gets you through 20-25 books per year. Walking for 15 minutes adds nearly a mile to your day. Fifteen minutes of focused prospecting can generate six to ten cold calls, dozens of personalized connection requests, or several high-impact video messages to ghosting prospects.

The power isn't in the duration, but in consistent, focused execution of time blocking for sales activities.

The 15-Minute Power Block Rules

These 3 rules are requirements if you want your time blocking strategy to actually work.

Rule 1: Single-task only. 

Your 15-minute prospecting block is for prospecting. Not prospecting while monitoring email. Not prospecting between Slack messages. Just prospecting. If you spend three minutes calling and twelve minutes scrolling Instagram, you didn't prospect for 15 minutes.

Rule 2: Everything else can wait.

Yes, that includes your boss. You will not lose a customer or your job because you ignored email for 15 minutes. Responding at the end of your block is still professional. Think about it—if you were sitting face-to-face with your top client, would you stop mid-conversation to check email? Treat your power blocks with the same respect.

Rule 3: Protect the block like your commission depends on it.

Because it does. Top performers don't ask permission to prospect. They schedule it, block it, and defend it against every interruption. The coworker who needs "just a minute" can wait sixteen minutes.

What Actually Happens in 15 Minutes

Specificity kills procrastination. You're more likely to execute when you know exactly what you're doing during your time blocking windows.

Eight to fifteen cold calls fit comfortably in 15 minutes. That's enough to connect with two or three decision-makers if you're efficient. Send ten to fifteen LinkedIn connection requests to stakeholders outside your network. Write and mail three handwritten notes to accounts you closed this month. Record personalized video messages for three prospects who've gone dark.

None of these activities requires elaborate preparation or perfect conditions. They require you to show up for 15 minutes and do the work. That's it.

Schedule Your Priorities or Someone Else Will

Stephen Covey said the key isn't prioritizing your schedule, but scheduling your priorities. Most salespeople do the opposite—they let their calendars fill with whatever lands there first, then wonder why revenue-generating work never happens.

Your calendar should reflect your income goals. If hitting quota requires consistent prospecting, your calendar should show consistent prospecting blocks. If building relationships with key accounts matters, those touchpoints should be scheduled.

When you schedule your sales priorities first, everything else fits around them. When you don't, everything else crowds them out entirely.

Look at your calendar right now. How many prospecting blocks do you see this week? If the answer is zero, you've just identified why your pipeline feels thin.

How to Apply Time Blocking Starting Now

Open your calendar and block three 15-minute windows for prospecting tomorrow. Morning, midday, and late afternoon. Label them "Prospecting Power Block" and set them as busy.

Before each block, decide on one specific activity: cold calls, LinkedIn outreach, video messages, or handwritten notes. Don't try to do multiple things. Pick one and execute for the full 15 minutes.

Close your email, silence your phone. For 15 minutes, nothing else exists except the activity you committed to. When the timer ends, return to everything else.

Track your blocks for one week. Count how many you actually protected versus how many got sacrificed to "urgent" requests. This data will reveal whether you're serious about prospecting or just pretending to be.

Make Time or Make Excuses—You Can't Do Both

Top performers don't wait for the perfect time to prospect. They don't need two-hour windows or complete silence or ideal conditions. They make the time, even when it's just 15 minutes. Especially when it's just 15 minutes.

That 15-minute window you're dismissing as too small? It could be the first conversation with your biggest account next quarter. It could be the connection that leads to your highest commission check. It could be the breakthrough that turns a struggling month into a record-breaker.

But only if you actually protect it. Only if you treat time blocking for prospecting as non-negotiable. Only if you stop letting your calendar lie to you about why you're not doing the work.

Your pipeline doesn't care how busy you looked today. It cares about the calls you made, the emails you sent, and the relationships you built. Fifteen focused minutes at a time.

Stop letting busy work crowd out revenue-generating activities. Download our free Time Audit Log to identify exactly where your selling time is going and reclaim hours each week for actual prospecting. Track your activities for just three days and discover what's really eating your calendar.

Are your fitness goals realistic for the life of a busy sales professional?

"I find that a lot of sales leaders I work with are operating at about 110% capacity. So when we're talking about tackling health and fitness, we have to really understand what is going to be the few habits that are really easy to do and have the biggest bang for buck."

That's Josh Hulsebosch, a fitness coach who specializes in working with sales professionals, speaking on the Sales Gravy podcast. His observation cuts straight to the real reason most January fitness resolutions fail: they're trying to add more to an already overflowing plate.

The typical sales professional is already drowning in competing priorities while operating at maximum capacity. When New Year’s hits, the instinct is to overhaul everything at once. New diet. New workout plan. New morning routine. That approach might work for people with open calendars and low pressure. For salespeople pushing through Q1 kickoffs, territory planning, and quota pressure, it is a fast track to burnout.

The All-or-Nothing Trap

Meet Steve. He's an individual contributor who decided January 1st would mark his transformation. No more coffee. Five-mile runs every morning. Intermittent fasting. Four hours of cold calling daily because he just finished reading Fanatical Prospecting.

Ten days in, Steve slept through his alarm, missed his workout, and ordered a triple-shot latte on the way to work.

That emotional crash bled into his work. His prospecting activity dropped. His confidence dipped. His motivation evaporated under the weight of his own perfectionism.

Steve's mistake wasn't lack of commitment. He turned ambitious goals into self-sabotage by refusing to acknowledge a simple truth: sustainable change requires starting where you are, not where you wish you were.

Most sales professionals approach fitness goals like they approach pipeline building—more activity equals better results. But health doesn't work like prospecting. You can't brute force your way into better sleep or lower stress. The body requires a different strategy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ilLRFM78Mw

The 110% Capacity Problem

Sales is a cognitively demanding profession. You're the quarterback of the business. Every day requires strategic thinking, relationship management, objection handling, and staying mentally sharp through rejection.

When you're already operating at 110% capacity, adding extreme fitness commitments creates another obligation you can't meet, another source of stress, another thing to feel guilty about when you inevitably miss a workout or eat fast food between calls.

The sales professionals who successfully improve their health identify which habits will support their performance, then build them into their existing routine. They do not chase trends. They focus on fundamentals.

The Four Pillars of Health for Sales Professionals

Fitness and health goals for sales professionals need to be realistic for people working at maximum capacity. You can't afford to waste energy on complicated protocols or fitness fads. You need the fundamentals: exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress management.

When these four pillars are strong, everything else becomes easier.

Pillar One: Exercise

The fitness industry wants you to believe you need intense workouts, complicated programs, and hours at the gym.

For sales professionals, the single most effective exercise habit is walking 8,000 steps daily.

This number is achievable for most people regardless of fitness level. It builds momentum without requiring a complete schedule overhaul. When you consistently hit 8,000 steps, you prove to yourself that you can follow through on a commitment without sacrificing your work performance.

Movement improves cognitive function, reduces stress hormones, and helps with sleep quality—all critical for sales performance.

Make it automatic. Take calls while walking. Park farther away from the office. Walk to get coffee instead of ordering delivery. Use a standing desk and pace during internal meetings. Build movement into what you are already doing rather than treating it as another task.

Once 8,000 steps become effortless, you can layer in strength training or other activities. But walking is the foundation. It's the one exercise habit that compounds without breaking you.

Pillar Two: Nutrition

Sales professionals tend to fall into two nutrition traps. The first is eating like garbage because they're too busy to care. The second is attempting some extreme diet overhaul that lasts nine days before they're back to their old patterns.

The solution isn't meal plans or macro tracking or cutting entire food groups. It's having a system that works when you're slammed.

Start here: don't skip meals. When you're running between meetings and surviving on coffee, your blood sugar crashes. That kills your cognitive performance and drives you toward quick fixes that leave you feeling worse an hour later.

Keep protein-rich foods accessible. Greek yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, protein bars that aren't candy in disguise, rotisserie chicken, nuts. These don't require cooking or planning. They stabilize your energy and keep you sharp during long stretches between meals.

Meal prep doesn't need to be complicated. Pick one day, cook a large batch of something simple—grilled chicken, ground turkey, rice, roasted vegetables—and portion it out. Now you have real food available when your schedule gets chaotic.

Hydration matters more than most people realize. Dehydration mimics fatigue. Keep water at your desk. Drink it between calls. If you're consuming coffee all day, match it with water. You'll notice the difference in your afternoon energy levels.

Pillar Three: Sleep

Sleep deprivation destroys sales performance. You get paid to think. When you run on five or six hours of sleep, decision-making suffers. Decision-making suffers. Emotional regulation weakens. Your ability to read prospects and handle objections declines.

You can't always control how many hours you sleep, especially during high-pressure periods. But you can improve sleep quality.

Start with a simple nighttime routine that signals to your body it's time to wind down. Turn off screens thirty minutes before bed. Keep your bedroom cool. If your mind races when you lie down, acknowledge the thoughts without engaging with them. Notice they're there, then redirect your focus to your breathing.

If you wake up in the middle of the night with work thoughts, write them down or set a reminder for the next day. This closes the mental loop and allows your brain to let go.

Pillar Four: Stress Management

Sales is a pressure environment. Constant decision-making. Emotional labor. Rejection. Urgency. You move from call to meeting to fire drill to another call with almost no downtime. Over time, your nervous system stays stuck in high alert.

That chronic stress does not just affect your mood. It impacts your sleep, your focus, your patience with prospects, and your ability to think clearly in complex conversations. If you do not manage it, it will manage you.

Controlled breathing is one of the fastest ways to regulate your nervous system.

Inhale for four seconds. Hold for four. Exhale for four. Hold for four.

This is box breathing. You can do it between calls. Before a tough conversation. While waiting for a prospect to answer. It does not draw attention. It just brings your system back into balance.

When stress is regulated, sleep improves. When sleep improves, thinking becomes clearer. Clearer thinking leads to better sales performance.

It is a small habit. The impact compounds.

Building Fitness Goals That Actually Stick

If you're surviving on five hours of sleep, start there. If you're skipping meals and running on caffeine, fix your nutrition first. If you haven't moved your body in weeks, commit to 8,000 steps.

Don't try to overhaul all four pillars simultaneously. That's the all-or-nothing trap that killed Steve's momentum in ten days.

When you take care of your physical and mental health, you show up sharper for your prospects, your team, and your numbers. Your body is the vehicle for your career. You can't hit quota consistently if you're running on empty.

Start with one pillar. Build one habit. Give it time to take root before you add the next one. That's how you win in Q1 and beyond.

If you are serious about building fitness habits that actually fit the realities of sales, go deeper with Josh Hulsebosch’s performance-focused courses on Sales Gravy University. His programs are built specifically for sales professionals who are operating at full capacity and still want to win on health, energy, and longevity.

Here's a question that keeps salespeople up at night: How do you build a powerful personal brand without stepping on your company's toes?

That's the question Taylor Deadrick asked me during a recent live event. Taylor works for Insperity (a fantastic company that handles all our HR and payroll at Sales Gravy, by the way), and she wanted to know how to establish her own brand while staying aligned with her employer.

If you've ever felt this tension, you're not alone. The fear of conflicting with your company's brand holds too many salespeople back from building the authority they need to win more deals.

Let me show you how to build a personal brand that actually amplifies your company's message instead of competing with it.

The Only Real Conflict You Need to Worry About

Here's the brutal truth: The only way you'll conflict with your company's brand is if you assert that your own opinion is that of your employer, or what you're posting, saying, or writing conflicts with their core values, their marketing message, or the way they go to market.

That's it. That's the line.

If you start trying to speak for your company or post things that contradict their values, you've got a problem. But if everything you do supports those core values, you're going to be just fine.

Think about it this way: Your company hired you because you aligned with their mission. Now your job is to amplify that mission through your own authentic voice and expertise.

The mistake most salespeople make is thinking their personal brand needs to be separate from or independent of their company. Wrong. Your personal brand should be the human face of your company's value proposition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xi5PHIrBts

Your Personal Brand Is Bigger Than Your Logo

Your personal brand isn't just what you post on LinkedIn. It's not your profile picture or your witty headline.

Your personal brand is the confidence you show when you hop on a microphone and ask a tough question. It's your smile and the way you treat people. It's whether you're kind, whether you invest in yourself, whether you show up with expertise that actually helps people solve problems.

Your personal brand is the human being who walks into businesses every day and shows up for those businesses. That's the most important part of your brand, and that's the part that builds trust and causes people to buy you.

Everything else (your LinkedIn posts, your content, your online presence) is just an extension of that core identity.

Authority: The Secret Weapon of Personal Branding

When I think about building a personal brand, I think about one word: authority.

Authority is your expertise. It's what you know that helps other people win. And here's the beautiful thing: When you build authority in your space, you're not competing with your company's brand. You're reinforcing it.

Let's use Taylor's situation as an example. She works with small and medium-sized businesses, helping them grow by taking HR and payroll off their plate so they can focus on what matters. That's exactly why we came to Insperity in the first place.

If Taylor builds her authority around understanding the problems small business owners face, if she becomes known for helping companies break through growth barriers, if she consistently shares insights about the challenges her buyers deal with every single day, that authority doesn't conflict with Insperity. It amplifies everything they stand for.

When you focus on your expertise and how you help people, your personal brand becomes a magnet. You create leads. When prospects research you before a meeting, they see someone they actually want to talk to. You're building trust before you ever shake hands.

The Five S Framework for Building Authority

In my book The LinkedIn Edge, I walk through what I call the Five S's for building your personal brand, especially on LinkedIn. This framework keeps you aligned with your company while establishing your unique authority.

The key is sending the right message to the marketplace about the expertise you bring, your authority in solving specific problems, and how you can help people win. When you focus there, everything else falls into place.

Your content should showcase the patterns you're seeing with your buyers, the problems you solve consistently, and simple frameworks they can use right away. That's what creates familiarity. That's what warms up the room before you ever make a call.

Think of LinkedIn as your familiarity engine. When you show up consistently with practical insights, every outreach gets easier and every conversation becomes more productive.

Know Your Company's Social Media Policy Inside and Out

Before you post a single piece of content, take a hard look at your company's social media policy. Understand what they allow you to say and what they don't. Know those boundaries cold.

This isn't about limiting yourself. It's about operating with confidence. When you know exactly where the guardrails are, you can create boldly within them.

Most companies have pretty straightforward policies: Don't share confidential information, don't speak on behalf of the company without authorization, and stay aligned with core values. Follow those rules, and you'll be fine.

The salespeople who get in trouble are the ones who never bothered to read the policy in the first place.

Your Brand Is What You Do, Not Just What You Post

Here's what too many people forget: Your personal brand is built in the trenches, not just on social media.

It's built into every discovery call where you ask better questions than your competitors. It's built in every proposal where you demonstrate that you truly understand your buyer's world. It's built in every follow-up where you add value instead of just checking in.

The online stuff matters, but it only works if it's backed up by real expertise and genuine care for your customers. You can't fake authority. You earn it by doing the work, studying your industry, understanding your buyers, and creating your content.

When you combine that real-world expertise with a consistent online presence, you become unstoppable. You're not just another rep. You're the person buyers want to work with.

The Bottom Line

Stop worrying about conflicting with your company's brand. Instead, focus on amplifying it through your unique voice and expertise.

Your personal brand should make your company look good. It should attract the right buyers. It should build trust before you ever pick up the phone.

Stay aligned with your company's core values. Know their social media policy. Focus your content on your specific expertise and the problems you solve. Show up consistently, both online and in person.

That's how you build a personal brand that becomes a magnet. That's how you make every conversation easier and every deal more likely to close. And that's how you become the salesperson everyone wants to buy from.

Your brand is your authority. Now go build it.

Want to learn the complete system for building authority on LinkedIn? Check out Jeb's latest book, The LinkedIn Edge, where he breaks down the Five S framework and shows you exactly how to turn your LinkedIn profile into a lead-generating machine.

This Money Monday Sales Gravy podcast episode is special because it kicks off our 20th season!

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been producing the Sales Gravy continuously for 20 years. Over the last 20 years, thanks to you—our incredible audience—we’ve consistently ranked as the #1 most listened to sales podcast in markets all over the world.

I remember my first podcast episode all those years ago, produced with a microphone I bought at Guitar Center and recorded under a blanket for sound suppression. Today, we produce our podcast in professional studios at Sales Gravy and have a full production team on staff to ensure we are giving you the highest quality sound possible. 

What hasn’t changed is my unwavering focus on making the complex simple by cutting through the noise, eliminating the fluff, and giving you the basics and fundamentals that actually work in the real world.

We’ve got a ton of new episodes and bonus content coming your way, so be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and listen every week. 

Sales Professionals Must Have Goals to be Successful

Your personal goals are the aspirations that drive you, inspire you, and push you through the tough days. These goals are essential to helping you maintain sales discipline throughout your sales year. When developing personal goals, I break them down into three buckets:

To-Have Goals

These are the things you want to acquire or buy. Whether it’s a house, a new car, or building up your savings, to-have goals are about acquiring something that enhances your life.

To-Be Goals

These are about evolving into the person you want to become. Maybe you want to be a sales manager, or if you’re a manager, you want to be a director or VP of sales. You might want to go back to school for a degree or an MBA. Or you want to be a better spouse, a better leader, or a better peer. Maybe you want to be a President’s club winner or be recognized as an expert in your industry—whatever it is, to-be goals help you level up as a person and a professional.

To-Do Goals

These are experience goals. Think about experiences that create lifelong memories—maybe you want to travel somewhere special or take on a meaningful project or hobby you’ve always dreamed about.

Four Reasons Why Goals Matter in Sales

Number one, goals massively increase the likelihood that you’ll actually achieve the things you want. Speaking your goal out loud, writing it down, and being intentional about it has a powerful psychological effect.

Number two, goals make life meaningful. It’s unbelievably fulfilling to look back and see what you accomplished—how far you’ve come over the course of a year, five years, or a decade.

Number three, we work in a tough, competitive profession, and it’s just plain satisfying to put your commission checks, bonuses, and hard-won earnings toward something that improves your life or the lives of the people you love.

But the biggest reason to set goals—especially in sales—is that the sales profession is hard work and it can be brutal.  It’s loaded with rejection.

At every turn, we face potential “nos,” whether it’s prospecting calls, asking for next steps, pushing to level up to a decision-maker, or closing the deal. We even face internal rejection when we try to sell a complex deal internally to our own company or get approval for special pricing. Rejection is everywhere, and the fear of rejection—or avoiding it—is the number one reason salespeople fail to perform.

Add to that the grind: making call after call, stuffing data into the CRM, pushing through proposals, handling endless follow-ups, and selling becomes tedious, hard, rejection-dense work.

For this reason, it requires discipline to stay on track and keep grinding day after day and month after month over the course of the sales year. But here’s the rub: discipline can wane, especially if we’re not hyper-focused on a bigger prize.

Goals Give You the Discipline to Do the Hard Things

I want you to pay attention to this next part because understanding the real definition of discipline is critical.  Discipline is sacrificing what you want now for what you want most.

Human nature wants easy. We’d rather that customers call us than have to chase them. We’d rather deals close themselves than invest hours into multi-step follow-ups. We don’t want to face that “no.”

But success in sales is paid for in advance, with facing rejection and hard work. Therefore, if you don’t have a clear, compelling reason—something you want most—it’s easy to cave in and take the easy route instead of doing what really needs to be done.

This is the reason why having a strong set of personal goals is crucial for sales professionals. You need that powerful “why” to keep grinding when the going gets tough. When the pipeline’s not as full as you’d like or you’re hitting roadblocks, you need something more important than convenience to drag you back into the fight.

A Tactical System for Setting Winning Goals

Let’s jump into the tactics for actually doing this. If you’ve gone through any kind of SMART goal-setting course, some of this may sound familiar. But these basics are timeless and indispensable. To set effective goals, you need to ask and answer five basic questions:

What Do You Want?

Sounds simple, but for a lot of us, it’s not. We’re so busy scrolling through social media, bingeing on TikTok, or juggling daily distractions that we never pause to ask, “What do I really want from my life?” So step one is to get specific. Define it.

When Do You Want It?

Because we’re talking about next year’s personal goals, let’s keep them within a 12-month horizon. But any truly effective goal requires a deadline or target date—otherwise, it’s just a pipe dream. When you have a hard date, it creates urgency and focus.

Is It Attainable?

Be honest with yourself. If all your goals are ridiculously ambitious, you’ll burn out or give up once it’s clear you’re not making meaningful progress. Stretch goals are great—big, hairy, audacious goals will push you—but balance those with goals you can realistically achieve.

How Bad Do You Want It?

This is the ultimate question. If your goal doesn’t fire you up, if it’s not something you’d move mountains to achieve, you won’t push through the tough days. Remember, discipline means sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. If the desire isn’t there, the sacrifices won’t be made.

How Are You Going to Get There?

These are your steps to success—your system, your process, your roadmap. As James Clear says in Atomic Habits, you don’t rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems. The idea is simple: if you have a crystal-clear process for what you need to do daily, weekly, and monthly, you’ll keep moving toward the goal—even when life gets hectic.

This is where your personal business plan and your personal goals intersect.

For instance, if your to-do or to-have goal requires additional income—maybe you need a bigger commission check to afford that new pool or a bucket-list vacation—then you have to hit your sales targets. This means building a discipline system that ensures you’re prospecting enough, qualifying enough opportunities, following up diligently, and negotiating effectively. Without a system and personal business plan, you are more likely to get random results.

Stop Now and Build Your Goal Sheet

Sit in silence. Turn off the noise, get away from distractions, and grab a notebook and pen. Write down what you want, when you want it, if it’s attainable, how badly you want it, and how you plan to get there. Sketch it all out—just let the ideas flow. Once you’ve got it all down, build a formal goal sheet.

Yes, I’m talking about physically writing it out. There’s tremendous power in seeing your goals in black and white, or printing them out and pinning them above your desk. Countless studies show that written goals are far more likely to be realized than goals that just bounce around in your head.

This goal sheet is your personal roadmap—put it into your personal business plan so everything stays in one place.

Learn how to set winning goals and build your personal Goal Sheet in Jeb Blount’s comprehensive course: The Essentials of Setting Winning Goals

Do you plan to hit your sales goals, or just hope you will?

You set goals in January. By March, they are forgotten.

It's because most salespeople confuse wanting something with planning for it. 

“I want to close more deals this year.” That is not a goal. That is a wish.

“I want to be better at prospecting.” Still not a goal. Just a vague intention that leads nowhere.

Real sales goals require a system. Not motivation. Not inspiration. A repeatable process that turns big numbers into daily actions you can actually execute.

This four-step sales goal planning system turns annual quotas into weekly, executable actions that salespeople can control and measure.

Why Most Sales Goals Fail Before February

Most salespeople treat goal-setting like a New Year’s resolution. They write something down, feel good about it for a week, then watch it disappear under the weight of quota pressure and full calendars.

Three things kill sales goals before they have a chance:

Lack of specificity. Your brain cannot attach to something vague. There is no finish line, no way to measure progress, and no emotional connection to the outcome.

No breakdown. Big numbers paralyze you. Looking at an annual quota feels impossible. Your brain shuts down. You don’t know where to start, so you don’t start at all.

Zero accountability. Goals that live only in your head are easy to abandon. There is no consequence for missing them because nobody, including you, is really tracking them.

Research consistently shows that people who write down specific, challenging goals and track them perform significantly better than those who rely on vague intentions or hope.

The difference between hitting your number and missing it is having a systematic approach to sales goal planning and the discipline to execute it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qcAEM3qG3g

Step 1: Identify Your Major Milestones

Big goals overwhelm you. When you stare at “close $1.5 million this year,” your brain checks out. It feels too big, too far away, and too abstract.

The first step in effective sales goal planning is breaking that number into key checkpoints. These milestones tell you whether you are on track or falling behind.

For a $1.5 million annual goal:

Q1: $375KQ2: $375KQ3: $375KQ4: $375K

Now you are not chasing $1.5 million. You are chasing $375K this quarter. Still significant, but manageable.

Take it further. What does $375K mean for your pipeline?

If your average deal size is $50K, you need eight closed deals per quarter. If your close rate is 25 percent, you need 32 qualified opportunities in your pipeline each quarter to close those eight deals.

Suddenly, that intimidating annual number becomes a concrete monthly target of roughly 11 qualified opportunities.

You cannot control whether a deal closes, but you can control how many qualified opportunities you put in your pipeline. That is the number you chase.

Step 2: List Your Specific Tasks

Milestones tell you where you need to be. Tasks tell you how to get there.

These numbers will vary based on your market, deal size, and conversion rates. The point is forcing your goal all the way down to weekly actions you can control.

This step requires brutal honesty about the activities that actually generate results in your sales process.

If you need 11 qualified opportunities per month and your prospecting-to-opportunity conversion rate is 10 percent, you need 110 prospecting conversations monthly.

What does that look like in weekly tasks?

30 outbound calls

15 LinkedIn connection requests with personalized messages

10 follow-up emails to lukewarm prospects

3 referral conversations

Assign realistic timeframes to each task. Making 30 calls doesn’t require four hours. It requires 45 minutes of focused effort. Block the time, make the calls, move on.

The more specific you get, the less room there is for excuses. You either completed the tasks or you did not. You are either on pace or you are behind.

If you cannot list the specific weekly tasks required to hit your goal, you do not have a sales goal. You have a hope.

Step 3: Consider Obstacles and Resources

Every goal has obstacles waiting to derail it. Ignoring them does not make them disappear.

Identify what will try to stop you, then plan around it.

The biggest time killers in sales are rarely mysterious. Meetings that don’t move deals forward. Prospects who will never buy but keep you engaged. Administrative tasks that someone else should handle. Reorganizing your CRM instead of filling it with opportunities.

Here is how to expose them. Track your time for one week. Write down every activity in 30-minute blocks. No editing. No judgment. Just honest data.

At the end of the week, categorize everything:

Income-producing activities like prospecting, discovery, and closing

Income-supporting activities like proposals, follow-up, and research

Waste, which is everything else

Most salespeople discover they spend less than 30 percent of their time on income-producing activities. If that is you, you just found out why you are not hitting your goals.

Once you know where your time actually goes, you can protect the activities that matter. Block prospecting time before meetings start. Batch administrative work. Decline meetings where your presence adds no value.

Now identify resource gaps. What do you need that you don’t have?

Skills you need to develop. Tools that would improve your results. Support from leadership to open doors with key accounts.

Find these gaps early. Discovering you lack a critical skill in November is too late.

Step 4: Stay Flexible Without Lowering the Goal

Sales goal planning requires flexibility in tactics, not flexibility in commitment.

Markets shift. Buyers change. Your original plan may need adjustment. That does not mean the destination changes.

Review your goals monthly and let the data guide you. Ask three questions:

Am I on track

What’s working

What’s not working

If something is working, do more of it. If something isn’t working, adjust your approach.

For example, your data might show inconsistent execution, poor list quality, or weak follow-up. The answer is not abandoning foundational activities like cold calling. The answer is tightening your process, improving targeting, or reinforcing outreach with disciplined follow-up.

Flexibility means adjusting how you execute, not lowering the standard because the work is harder than expected.

Salespeople who hit ambitious goals stay flexible in their methods and uncompromising about the outcome.

Monthly reviews keep you honest. They prevent you from wasting months on ineffective activity before realizing you are off track.

Execute Your Sales Goal Planning System

Take one goal right now. Write it down with a specific number and a deadline.

Break it into three to five milestones. List the weekly tasks required. Identify your two biggest obstacles and the resources you need to overcome them.

Then execute. Review weekly. Adjust monthly. Never stop driving toward the outcome.

This system works because it eliminates ambiguity. You know what needs to happen this week. Obstacles don’t blindside you because you planned for them. You aren’t following a broken plan for six months because you built in regular reviews.

While other salespeople hope for a good year, you will be executing a plan. While they react to whatever fires pop up, you will be proactively driving toward measurable outcomes.

The difference between salespeople who hit their goals and those who do not is not talent or luck. It is having a systematic process for turning big goals into daily actions and the discipline to follow through when motivation fades.

Sales goals don’t fail because you lack desire—they fail because the plan isn’t specific enough to execute. Download the FREE Goal Planning Guide to turn your sales goals into results.

Here's a question that keeps salespeople up at night: How do you ask for more compensation when you're getting competitive external job offers without sounding like you're issuing an ultimatum?

That's the question posed by Brady from Arkansas. Brady's been getting legitimate job offers from recruiters, and he's wondering how to leverage these opportunities into better compensation at his current company without burning bridges or coming across as disloyal.

If you've ever found yourself in this position, you know it's a delicate dance. You want to be paid what you're worth, but you also don't want to destroy the relationships and goodwill you've built. So how do you navigate this conversation?

The Right Way to Have the Conversation

If you're getting external job offers from legitimate companies with strong brands, the key is in how you frame the conversation with your boss.

Here's the approach: "I really like working here, and I want to stay at this company. I love it. But I've got another company out there that's a good company. They're a great brand, they're well known, and they're making this job offer to me at a significantly higher level of compensation. It's hard for me to say no to that. I feel like I need to bring this to you before I make a decision because I like working here."

Notice what you're NOT saying. You're not walking in with an ultimatum saying, "If you don't give me this, I'm leaving." Instead, you're saying, "I want to stay here. I like it here. I'm just in a situation where they're offering me enough that it's turning my head and I'm looking their way."

This approach keeps the door open for a productive conversation about what might be possible without threatening your current employer or damaging your relationship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDppNt7jRsc

When Loyalty Actually Matters

Now, before you go schedule that meeting with your boss, you need to ask yourself a hard question: Do you owe this company some loyalty?

If you were down on your luck, lost a job, and they came along and gave you something that saved you, you probably owe them some loyalty for that. Not forever, but there's a little bit of honor in not just jumping to the next place immediately.

You also need to think about your resume. If you've just got there and a year later you're jumping to another place, that's on your resume. And believe it or not, even in today's world, that still means something. I won't hire people who jump from job to job every year. I don't care how good they are because they're probably going to jump again.

So think long term: Am I demonstrating to a future employer that I'm worth investing more money in? The answer is yes when you gave them three years of your life, performed at a really high level, and now you're going to leverage that to go level up elsewhere.

Speaking Your Boss's Language

Here's what most salespeople get wrong when asking for more money: They forget to speak the language their boss understands.

If you walk into your sales leader's office and say, "I want to make more money," you know what they're going to tell you? "Go sell more." And they're right. If you've got a great compensation plan with no limit on how much commission you can make, the answer is simple: crank out more sales.

So before you ask for more base salary, ask yourself: Do I have a limit on how much commission I can make? If the answer is no, then your first conversation should be about getting bigger opportunities.

Try this approach: "I can sell. I'm hitting numbers, but I'm not making the money I want. What can you do to give me bigger accounts, bigger opportunities, bigger customers? Give me better leads. What can you do to get me in a situation where I can earn more?"

This is speaking the boss's language. You're showing that you want to produce more, not just get paid more for the same work. If you get shut down in that situation, then you have another conversation.

The Commission vs. Base Salary Play

If you're a baller and you've proven you can sell, here's a move most salespeople never consider when negotiating compensation: Ask for a higher commission percentage instead of a higher base salary.

I honestly don't care about base. I think a base matters when you're getting started, and it's nice to have, but I would much rather have a higher commission percentage than a higher base.

Here's how you position it: "In the open market, I can take a similar job and make $400,000. I want to make the same thing here. Now there's two ways we could do this. One is that you can increase my base salary. Two is you give me a higher commission rate, and I think the commission rate should be this. I think I'm worth that."

What you're basically saying is that your cost of sales is going to be variable. They only pay you if you sell it, so their carrying costs stay the same.

In my company, the people who don't take a base salary make more than double in commission what people who do take a base salary bring home. There's a massive difference because the people saying "pay me more commission" are saying "I'm willing to put skin in the game in order to make more."

Now, this doesn't work if you're at a massive company with a thousand salespeople and rigid HR policies. But if you work for a smaller organization where people can make decisions, have an honest conversation around this approach.

You might even propose a tiered structure: "You can pay me your base commission on everything up to the quota you gave me. But once I cross that quota, I want my commission to roll up so that if I get over this number, the rate scales." That's a conversation most entrepreneurial leaders will entertain because it's putting your money where your mouth is.

What Money Can't Buy

Here's the thing most people miss when they're chasing the next big paycheck: There's always money out there you can chase. You have an obligation to yourself and your family to make as much as you possibly can in sales.

But there's also the value of working in a place that values you. There's more than just the money. There's the freedom, the flexibility, and the opportunity to be part of something that gives you purpose.

I had somebody come to me recently and ask this question, and I said, "This job that you're moving to that's going to pay you all this money, suddenly you're going to have someone who's micromanaging and telling you what to do every single day. In your current role, you're not making as much money, but you call the shots on your day every single day. Nobody even messes with you. Are you willing to sign up for that?"

They said their wife told them the exact same thing. Maybe that's a sign that having the freedom and flexibility is more valuable than making a lot of money but being miserable because everything you do is being micromanaged.

The Bottom Line

When it's time to ask for more money, remember these principles:

Bring the conversation to your boss before making a decision. Frame it as wanting to stay, not threatening to leave.

Consider what you owe in loyalty. If they gave you a chance when you needed one, factor that into your decision.

Speak your boss's language. Ask for bigger opportunities before asking for more base pay.

Consider the commission play. If you're confident in your abilities, asking for higher commission rates can be more lucrative than base salary increases when looking at total compensation.

Weigh the intangibles. Money isn't everything if you're trading freedom and fulfillment for a micromanaged existence.

The best compensation conversations happen when you approach them with confidence, gratitude, and a clear understanding of your value. That's how you get paid what you're worth without burning bridges along the way.

Want to learn more about leveraging your personal brand to create more career opportunities? Check out Jeb's newest book, The LinkedIn Edge, and discover how to turn your LinkedIn profile into a powerful career and sales tool.

Is your sales strategy built around how buyers should behave—or how they actually behave?

Imagine walking into a store and seeing a shirt for $50. Fine. Unremarkable. You might buy it, you might not.

Now imagine seeing that same shirt with a tag that reads: $100 NOW $50. Suddenly, you're interested. You found a deal. You beat the system. You're a hero.

Same price. Same shirt. Completely different emotional response.

That psychological gap between logic and emotion cost JCPenney roughly $1 billion and offers one of the most important lessons in sales psychology you'll ever learn: people don't buy with logic—they buy with emotion and justify with logic later.

The Fair and Square Disaster

In 2012, JCPenney hired Ron Johnson as CEO. Johnson was a retail rock star, the architect behind Apple Store's legendary success. He walked into JCPenney and saw chaos: endless coupons, manufactured "original prices," and constant sales cycles.

His solution? Kill it all.

Johnson launched "Fair and Square"—a radically transparent pricing model. No games. No coupons. No inflated prices marked down. Just one everyday low price on everything.

That $100 shirt marked down to $50? Now it was simply $50. Honest. Logical. Clean.

The market's response was brutal. Within one year, sales dropped 25%. The company lost nearly $1 billion. Stock price went into freefall. Johnson was fired.

What Johnson Got Wrong About Sales Psychology

Johnson made a catastrophic assumption: he believed customers were rational economic actors who would reward transparency and honesty.

He was dead wrong.

For decades, JCPenney's customers had been playing a game. They clipped coupons, timed sales, scrutinized flyers, and planned shopping trips around promotions. The weekly coupon wasn't just a discount—it was a ritual. Their insider advantage, their badge of savvy shopping honor.

Johnson stripped away their emotional satisfaction and replaced it with sterile efficiency.

Without the "$100 now $50" comparison, the flat $50 price lost all psychological weight. No thrill. No victory. No story to share. Same price. Different feeling.

The Sales Psychology Principle You're Ignoring

Loss aversion is twice as powerful as gain motivation.

Your prospects don't just want to gain something—they want to feel like they won, like they're in control, like they made a smart decision that will impress their boss.

When you strip away their buying process, when you force them into your "more efficient" workflow without their input, they don't see the gain. They experience loss. You've taken away their control, their ritual, their power, their role as the hero.

In sales, that feeling is deadly.

Your Customers Have Rituals Too

Think about your best accounts. What do they actually value?

It's probably not your features or your ROI calculator.

It's the rep they've worked with for years. It's the quarterly business review they rely on. It's the reporting cadence that makes them look good internally. It's the buying process that lets them feel competent and in control.

That's their ritual.

When you try to "streamline" their process, when you push them toward a different point of contact, when you change the reporting structure they trust—you're doing exactly what Ron Johnson did.

You're selling logic when they're buying a feeling.

Stop Leading With Features and Benefits

Most salespeople lose deals before they even start because they lead with logical arguments:

"Our platform reduces processing time by 40%."

"We integrate with 200+ systems."

"Our customer support response time is under 2 hours."

All logical. All true. All useless if your buyer doesn't feel something first.

Your prospect doesn't wake up excited about efficiency gains. They wake up stressed about looking good in front of their VP, avoiding mistakes, and maintaining control of their budget.

Research is clear: emotional decisions get made first, then logic comes in to justify them.

Your job isn't to build a logical case. Your job is to help your buyer feel like a hero, then give them the logical ammunition to defend that emotional decision internally.

How to Apply This Starting Today

Identify Their Rituals

Watch how your customers actually operate. Do they need three stakeholders in every meeting? Do they always loop in procurement at a specific stage? Do they have a preferred communication cadence?

Don't fight it. Work with it. Their process is their psychological anchor for stability.

Frame the Win They Can Own

Frame your solution so the customer feels in control and gets the credit.

Instead of: "Our platform will solve your problem."

Try: “This approach could help you demonstrate a 30% cost reduction in Q2—giving your team clear wins to share with leadership.”

Make them the hero of their own story.

Highlight Emotional Outcomes, Not Just Logical Ones

Don't just talk about what your product does. Talk about how it makes them feel.

"You'll have complete visibility so you're never caught off guard in executive meetings."

"Your team will finally have the data they need to look proactive instead of reactive."

"You'll be the person who solved the problem everyone else said was impossible."

Guide, Don't Force

Lead your prospects toward better outcomes without stripping away their sense of control.

Instead of forcing a complete switch to your system, collaborate on how your solution enhances their existing trusted process. Make them feel like a collaborator, not a passenger.

The Takeaway

Ron Johnson wasn't wrong that consumers should prefer transparent, honest pricing. He wasn't wrong that the coupon game was exhausting and complicated.

He was wrong about what people actually buy.

They buy feelings. Control. Victory. Status. The story they tell themselves about being smart.

Your prospects are no different. They're not buying your SaaS platform, your consulting services, or your enterprise solution. They're buying the feeling of being competent, in control, and successful.

The difference between average salespeople and top performers isn't product knowledge or work ethic. It's understanding the sales psychology behind how buyers actually make decisions.

When you appeal to emotion first and back it up with logic second, you stop losing deals to “no decision” and start winning consistently.

Because at the end of the day, sales isn't about having the best product. It's about making your customer feel like they made the best decision.

Ready to master buyer psychology and close more deals? Download the ACED Buyer Style Playbook and discover how to match your sales approach to the four core buyer personalities. Stop selling logic. Start selling the way your customers actually buy.