Here’s a question that’ll expose one of the most common productivity killers in sales: How much research should you do before making a cold call? That’s the challenge Michael Bricker from West Monroe, Louisiana, brought to a recent Ask Jeb episode. Five months into his role at Cantara Networks, a fiber-backed internet provider, Michael was supposed to spend three minutes researching each prospect. Instead, he found himself spending 15 to 30 minutes per call, terrified he’d miss the one critical ...
Nov 25, 2025•23 min
This is a very special Monday because it’s Thanksgiving week here in the United States. This is the week we pause to express gratitude for the people in our lives, for what we’ve been given, and for what we’ve accomplished. But gratitude isn’t just a feel-good emotion reserved for the holidays. It’s also a performance- and life-enhancing routine that can give you sales superpowers. Gratitude Builds a Strong Mindset Sales is a mental game . Your mindset, attitude, and beliefs have more impact on ...
Nov 24, 2025•10 min
Most new account executives stare at their territory list and feel the weight of it immediately. Fifty accounts. A hundred accounts. Sometimes more. Each one needs research, a plan, and outreach that doesn’t sound like every other cold email clogging their prospect’s inbox. Jake McOsker, an account executive at Forrester Research, found himself facing exactly this problem when he moved from BDR to AE. He cracked it by changing how he used AI for account planning. “Rather than taking 10 to 15 min...
Nov 20, 2025•26 min
Here’s a question that hits closer to home than most sales reps want to admit: What do you do when you’ve been away from prospecting for a while and suddenly the call reluctance feels brand new again? That’s the situation Dwayne Malmberg from Sugar Land, Texas found himself in. He’d been crushing it in inside sales and appointment setting since the 90s. He was good at it. Really good. But after taking just over two years away from the phones, a new opportunity came along, and suddenly he was fac...
Nov 18, 2025•17 min
A few years ago, I was on a desperate search for a dining table. My favorite from my old place was a gorgeous, single-piece antique that mathematically wouldn’t fit in my new home. I loved that table, and losing it felt like losing a member of the family. So I started the hunt for a replacement, a piece worthy of its memory. I found a potential candidate at a high-end furniture store: a stunning cherry table. I ran my hand along its smooth, cool surface, picturing it loaded with platters of food...
Nov 17, 2025•11 min
To a sales leader, it’s a familiar story. Month one: Your new SDR is on fire. Energy through the roof. They’re excited about cold calling. Month two: Still strong. Meetings are getting booked. Dashboard looks good. Month three: Cracks appear. Rejections pile up. But they hang in. Month four: Burnout. The dials drop. The energy’s gone. That superstar you hired 90 days ago is updating their LinkedIn profile —and you know exactly what that means. Now you’re back in hiring mode, your team’s pipeline...
Nov 13, 2025•27 min
Here’s a truth most car dealerships don’t want to admit: people don’t hate buying cars. They hate buying cars from salespeople who make the customer experience painful. That’s the challenge Brendan Carlington from Mount Pleasant, Michigan, brought to me on a recent episode of Ask Jeb. Brendan jumped back into auto sales this year after spending time in other industries, and he noticed something big. Traditional sales positions are disappearing. Customers can research everything online, get quote...
Nov 11, 2025•12 min
We are moving into the most dangerous time of year for sales professionals . . . the holidays. From now until the first week of January, you’re going to face a perfect storm of distractions, excuses, and temptations that can absolutely destroy your year end number and your first quarter production next year. Sadly, most salespeople don’t even see it coming. It’s not until the end of December that they realize they’re in trouble, but by then, it’s too late. The Trouble With the Holidays The troub...
Nov 09, 2025•11 min
Every salesperson knows that feeling, the one right before the big meeting when confidence wavers and doubt creeps in. Alex Weber knows it, too. He’s one of the few people to go from hosting American Ninja Warrior to competing on the show. When I asked him what separates winners from everyone else on an episode of The Sales Gravy Podcast , he said: “Winners believe they’re going to win. You’re not going to win every deal. But even as I say that, I’m never going to let myself actually believe tha...
Nov 06, 2025•28 min
Here’s a question that’ll mess with your head: What do you do when you’re making seven figures in sales, crushing every goal, and suddenly … you just don’t feel the same motivation anymore? That’s the question Matthew Feit from Toms River, New Jersey, posed on an Ask Jeb episode. Matthew’s living the dream that most salespeople chase their entire careers. He’s at the top of his game financially. He’s proven everything he set out to prove. And now he’s stuck in this weird limbo where the fire tha...
Nov 04, 2025•18 min
This time of year is critical. As sales leaders map out their budgets for the new year, the conversation always centers on a core conflict: How to cut expenses and, simultaneously, motivate teams to hit larger quotas. What’s the first line item to feel the squeeze? Training and development . It is often incorrectly labeled a ‘want’ and not a ‘need.’ We hear leaders say, “It can wait until next quarter,” or, “Once we stabilize revenue, we’ll invest in the team.” This short-sighted thinking doesn’...
Nov 03, 2025•8 min
Every sales professional has a horror story that still makes them break out in a cold sweat years later. The deal that imploded spectacularly. The customer interaction that went sideways in ways you couldn’t predict. The moment you sat in your car afterward in complete silence, questioning every decision that led you to this career. These moments feel intensely personal and isolating. But the truth is, every rep who’s lasted in this profession has been there. On an episode of The Sales Gravy Pod...
Oct 30, 2025•47 min
Here’s a problem that’ll tie you in knots: You’ve got a killer software solution that saves companies massive amounts of money on employee benefits. You know exactly who needs it: Fortune 1000 companies with self-insured health plans. But you can’t get a single meeting with the people who matter. That’s the situation Peter Kleinman from Provo, Utah, finds himself in. As the sales and marketing guy for his dad’s startup, he’s tasked with landing enterprise clients while juggling full-time classes...
Oct 28, 2025•21 min
The year was 1938. Families across America gathered, listening during the golden age of radio. On the eve of Halloween, a broadcast interrupted their evening: A live report claimed Martian cylinders had landed in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Within minutes, panic erupted as citizens fled their homes, convinced Earth was under alien attack. The entire event was fake. It was a perfectly executed radio drama by 23-year-old Orson Welles. Here’s the sales lesson tucked into The War of the Worlds sci-fi ...
Oct 26, 2025•7 min
AI in sales isn’t coming soon. It’s already here, and it’s quietly separating the salespeople who will thrive from those who won’t. On the Sales Gravy Podcast, sales expert and author Victor Antonio shares this quote: “You won’t lose your job to AI. You’ll lose your job to people who are using AI.” While everyone debates whether artificial intelligence will replace salespeople, the real shift is already happening. What you need to know is which parts of your job will still matter when a machine ...
Oct 23, 2025•45 min
Here’s a question that’ll keep you up at night: How do you take a company from $300K in annual revenue to $1.5 million in 18 months, then scale to $3-$5 million within five years? That’s the challenge facing Greg Hirschi from Colorado. He’s the new executive leader of an 18-year-old company selling ethics assessment services to professional licensing boards. They’ve expanded from an entrepreneurial model to a small team with one salesperson and one customer service representative. The goal is ag...
Oct 21, 2025•19 min
I’ve been intrigued by all of the LinkedIn posts lately from sales professionals, leaders, and experts proclaiming the phone is back! Even the “phone-is-dead” evangelists seem to have had a change of heart and are encouraging salespeople to “phone a customer.” My favorite posts are from salespeople who took this advice, called a customer, and were surprised— even stunned— to discover that their customer actually wanted to talk . It’s more proof that buyers are starving for real, authentic, human...
Oct 19, 2025•10 min
Your sales team has the tools. They know the pitch. The CRM is full of leads. So why are half your reps still missing quota? The real issue? Most sales leaders are managing activity instead of developing people. They’re applying pressure instead of addressing the mental blocks that sabotage performance before reps ever pick up the phone. The Real Problem Holding Back Sales Teams Walk into any sales bullpen and you’ll hear the same beliefs on repeat: “I’m not good at cold calling.” “Nobody wants ...
Oct 16, 2025•39 min
Here’s a question that’ll make your head spin: How do you train MLM recruits who have zero sales experience to actually sell instead of just posting on social media and hoping for the best? That’s the question Andrew Osborne from Pittsburgh brought to me. Andrew works in direct selling and network marketing, specifically health and wellness nutrition supplements. Like most MLM leaders, he’s frustrated watching new recruits default to the guru-approved strategy of posting on Instagram and waiting...
Oct 14, 2025•18 min
You’ve probably heard it a hundred times lately— AI is coming for your job . Every week, there’s a new headline about another role being automated, another company replacing people with bots, another “AI agent” that can do the work of ten humans in half the time. And if you spend too much time reading those headlines, it’s easy to start wondering, W hat happens to me? What happens to salespeople like us in a world where machines can do almost everything we used to do? AI is Here to Stay You can’...
Oct 13, 2025•8 min
The gap between average salespeople and elite performers lies in process. While most reps chase quick wins and hope something sticks, top producers follow proven sales strategies that consistently deliver results. They’ve mastered the fundamentals that turn prospects into customers and customers into advocates. If you’re ready to finish the year strong and blow past your quota, these five battle-tested sales strategies from previous podcasts will transform how you sell. 1. Deliver an Unforgettab...
Oct 09, 2025•21 min
How do you prepare your mindset and create the discipline to be effective every single day? That’s what Jeff Vellas asked on a recent Ask Jeb episode, and it’s the question that separates the pros from the amateurs in sales. Sales is the hardest profession in business. It’s the only job where you have to go out and find rejection and bring it home every single day. Every ask you make carries the potential to be rejected at a deep, painful level. That’s why we get paid so well. And that’s why mos...
Oct 07, 2025•10 min
Here is an undeniable truth: The No. 1 reason for failure in sales is an empty pipeline, and the No. 1 reason you have an empty pipeline is that you are not doing enough prospecting. In sales, everything rests on putting qualified opportunities in your pipeline. Prospecting is the beginning and the end, alpha and omega. If you don’t prospect, you will fail. That is a guaranteed truth. Each and every sales day, you must connect with prospects, engage them in meaningful conversations, and convert ...
Oct 06, 2025•11 min
Cold calling terrifies most salespeople more than losing their biggest account. The rejection. The hang-ups. The voice telling you that you’re bothering people who don’t want to hear from you. Before transitioning into sales, Steve Munn spent nine years as a professional hockey defenseman. As a hockey player, his job was to make life difficult for the other team and absorb whatever they dished back. “Part of it was getting punched in the face,” he said on a recent episode of the Sales Gravy Podc...
Oct 02, 2025•37 min
Here’s a question that keeps startup founders up at night: How does a first sales hire build pipeline and prospect effectively when there’s zero technology, no tools, and absolutely no data resources available? That’s the challenge Matthew Russell brought to the table, and it’s a scenario that’s far more common than you’d think. Companies transitioning from founder-led sales often throw their first sales hire into the deep end with nothing but a laptop and a “good luck” pat on the back. If you’r...
Sep 30, 2025•16 min
Cicero once said, “Cultivation of the mind is as necessary as food to the body.” Sales is fundamentally a mental game. Your capacity for understanding your prospects at a deeper level and developing creative solutions that solve their problems—that’s your winning edge. In a profession where you need to outwit and out maneuver your competitors to win, your ability to think, to truly contemplate and reflect, might be the most underutilized competitive advantage in your sales arsenal. Always Respon...
Sep 28, 2025•9 min
Most salespeople lose a sales meeting before they ever open their mouth. They show up with decks of slides, lists of discovery questions, or AI-generated talking points, thinking preparation is about having more material. But while they’re busy organizing, their prospects are mentally checking out—and the meeting hasn’t even started. Lee Salz, bestselling author and founder of Sales Architects, has observed this pattern for decades. “ If you want to win more deals at the prices you want, you nee...
Sep 25, 2025•16 min
You know AI is transforming sales, everyone’s talking about it, but you’re still staring at ChatGPT like it’s some mysterious black box, wondering what magical question you should type in first. That’s the reality for most salespeople even now. They know they need to embrace AI, they’ve heard the success stories, but they’re paralyzed by the complexity and overwhelmed by the options. If you’re nodding your head right now, you’re not alone. The biggest barrier to AI adoption isn’t technical—it’s ...
Sep 23, 2025•12 min
Welcome to Grind Season. This week, we enter the most pivotal period of your entire sales year. From now until mid-December, how you choose to invest your limited time will determine whether you end your year strong, hit your income goals, make it to the winner’s circle at President’s Club, and start next year with a full pipeline OR wallow in mediocrity, miss your number, and damage your career. Write Your Sales Comeback Story If you’re ahead of your goals, this is your time to build an insurmo...
Sep 21, 2025•9 min
Most salespeople waste their careers fighting over the same crowded prospects. Meanwhile, untapped markets are sitting in plain sight. These are the industries, segments, and territories your competitors don’t take seriously—or don’t even notice. They’re wide open, and they reward the salespeople willing to do the work. On the Sales Gravy Podcast, I spoke with Nicholas Lalla, an economic development expert who helped bring more than $200 million of investment into a market everyone else had writ...
Sep 18, 2025•38 min
