Here’s a question that hits every sales professional right in the gut: What do you do when your email prospecting tanks and you’re staring at response rates that are circling the drain? That’s the question Tara asked on a recent episode of Ask Jeb on The Sales Gravy Podcast, and it’s one I hear constantly from SDRs, account executives, and even sales managers who’ve convinced themselves that cold calling is outdated. If you’re nodding along, thinking email is the future and cold calling is dead,...
Feb 03, 2026•25 min
On this first Monday of the second month of the year, it’s time for a gut check. First, we need to check where we are against our new year goals. Next, we need to take stock of our first month’s sales performance and make adjustments. We’re just a little more than 30 days away from our New Year’s intentions, resolutions, and goals. A month ago, we set out into the new year with hope and ambition that this year would be our best ever and that we’d make positive lasting changes in our lives. It’s ...
Feb 02, 2026•10 min
“Buyers want a machine, a sales machine, not a mystery. If the sales machine only works because of the founder, it’s not that valuable. It’s actually quite risky.” Chris Spratling, founder of Chalkhill Blue Limited and author of The Exit Roadmap , shared this on a recent episode of the Sales Gravy podcast. He works with business owners preparing to sell their companies, helping them get operations, finances, and sales engines ready for new ownership. That insight cuts straight to the reason so m...
Jan 29, 2026•22 min
Here’s a question that’ll change how you think about this profession forever: What’s the one moment that reveals you’re built for sales success? For most people, that moment never comes. They stumble into sales, struggle with the stereotypes, and either quit or spend their entire career fighting against what they think selling is supposed to be. But for those of us who get it, there’s a moment of clarity so powerful it changes everything. Mine happened in high school when I was chasing a girl an...
Jan 27, 2026•13 min
I’m not sure if you noticed this, but there is a massive gap between what salespeople and leaders know and what they actually do. I’ve written 18 books and trained hundreds of thousands of salespeople. I can’t tell you how many times someone comes up to me and says, “Jeb, I read Fanatical Prospecting . Great book. But that stuff doesn’t work for me.” Or they’ll say, “I tried that objection handling technique you taught, but it didn’t work, so I went back to what I was doing before.” Here’s what ...
Jan 26, 2026•13 min
“That chip on my shoulder made me less empathetic, more rushed, too eager to solve things too fast, and less thoughtful. That chip built me, but then it started to tear me down.” I said that recently in a conversation with Harriet Mellor of Your Sales Co , and it captures something every sales leader needs to understand. I grew up in the sales training business. My dad literally wrote THE book on prospecting—several of them, actually. I worked at Paycom, Comcast, and various startups where I con...
Jan 22, 2026•51 min
Here’s a question that’ll make your head spin: You just inherited 50 neglected accounts, and your customers feel taken for granted. How do you reposition yourself as a high-value partner instead of just another transactional vendor who’s about to disappoint them? That’s the question posed by Scott Northway, and it’s one of the most common challenges I see in sales today. A new account manager takes over, inherits a book of business that’s been ignored, and now has to figure out how to rebuild re...
Jan 20, 2026•15 min
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 ...
Jan 19, 2026•14 min
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 D...
Jan 15, 2026•44 min
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 ...
Jan 13, 2026•5 min
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 prospe...
Jan 12, 2026•9 min
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 st...
Jan 08, 2026•35 min
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 ...
Jan 06, 2026•7 min
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 suppre...
Jan 05, 2026•11 min
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 ...
Jan 02, 2026•38 min
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 p...
Dec 30, 2025•15 min
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 billio...
Dec 29, 2025•10 min
How Do Top Performers Stay Motivated When Sales Gets Hard? You know the feeling when you close a big deal. The rush. The quiet satisfaction of updating your pipeline. Maybe a quick high-five with your manager. And then, almost immediately, it fades. You’re back to cold calls that go unanswered, emails that disappear into inboxes, and prospects who promised they were interested suddenly going silent. In sales, rejection isn’t a side effect of the job. It is the job. That reality is exactly why mo...
Dec 26, 2025•38 min
Here’s a problem that’ll make your head spin: What do you do when you can sell way more than your company can produce? That’s the question posed by Dylan Noah from Toronto. Dylan sells craft cider to bars and restaurants across his territory. He’s the only salesperson for a small producer, working with limited tools (no proper CRM), and here’s the kicker: he could sell a million dollars’ worth of product, but production isn’t enough to meet that demand. If you’re shaking your head thinking this ...
Dec 23, 2025•18 min
While regret anchors you to past failures, reflection acts as a catalyst for future sales growth. This article and Sales Gravy Money Monday Podcast episode explores how to break the “if-only” loop and provides a step-by-step year-end debrief to help you extract lessons from your wins and losses, ensuring you start the new year with clarity and a proven system for success. Explore: How to get out of your regret loop The power of reflection How reflection creates awareness A system for achieving y...
Dec 22, 2025•12 min
“You can’t be more committed to somebody’s success than they are.” That insight comes from Colleen Stanley, author of Be the Mentor Who Mattered , during a recent conversation on the Sales Gravy Podcast. It’s a simple statement that cuts through all the noise about mentorship and gets to the heart of why most mentoring relationships fail to deliver results. Sales professionals constantly talk about wanting mentors. They want access to someone who’s been there, done that, and can show them the sh...
Dec 18, 2025•47 min
Here’s a truth that’ll make you uncomfortable: Getting rejected isn’t the real problem. The real problem is that you’re not doing the work up front to lower the probability of rejection in the first place. That’s the insight that hit when Wendy Ramirez, a leading Mexican sales expert and author of Lo que nadie habla de las ventas: Estrategias para no ser llamarada de petate or What Nobody Talks About in Sales: Strategies to Avoid Being a Flash in the Pan , joined this week’s episode about handli...
Dec 16, 2025•22 min
If you’ve been looking for a way to hit or exceed your annual quota, qualify for President’s Club, or simply earn a bigger paycheck or bonus, focusing on helping business owners reduce their tax burden by investing in your product, service, or software in the final weeks of the year can give you the edge you need to get more sales closed. Business Owners are Motivated to Reduce Taxes In the United States, there are millions of SMBs, and the vast majority of these businesses are what we call pass...
Dec 14, 2025•10 min
Is Your LinkedIn Personal Branding Built for Buyers or Bystanders? “Respectfully, you are not my audience.” Performance coach Giselle Ugarte said that on a recent episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, and it might be the most liberating thing you’ll hear about LinkedIn personal branding this year. Because somewhere between building your profile and hitting publish on that post, you’ve started making decisions based on what your college roommate might think. Or your former boss. Or yes, your mom. T...
Dec 11, 2025•37 min
Here’s the scenario that’s playing out in sales organizations everywhere right now: Your team fought through a brutal first half of the year, rallied momentum in the second half, crushed their numbers, and now they’re ready to coast through December. That’s the exact situation Kyle Begbie, a regional sales director at Fuse HR Solutions in Ontario, Canada, brought to this week’s Ask Jeb. His team overcame massive market disruption, economic headwinds, and buyer hesitation to finish the year stron...
Dec 09, 2025•15 min
What Does a Perfect Bowling Game Have in Common With Top-Performing Sales Reps? Walk into a bowling alley on a Friday night, and you’ll see a scene that looks like pure recreation. The crash of pins, the rumble of conversation, the squeak of shoes on the approach. But beneath all that noise is something far more serious: discipline, repetition, emotional control, and the relentless pursuit of mastery. That’s the real game. And it’s the exact game top performers play in sales. Selling rewards con...
Dec 07, 2025•16 min
You’re Coachable, But Are You Truly Humble? You’ve been coachable your entire career. You take feedback, adjust your approach, read books, listen to podcasts, and implement what works. Yet being coachable doesn’t automatically make you humble—and that gap may be costing you more than you realize. Nicolas Restrepo, Senior Vice President of Sales at World Emblem, shared on a recent Sales Gravy Podcast episode: “What advice would I give myself ten years ago? Be humble. There’s a difference between ...
Dec 04, 2025•27 min
Here’s a question that’ll stop you in your tracks: Would you let someone walk up to you, take your wallet, empty out all your cash and credit cards, and leave your family with nothing? Of course not. That’s insane. But if you’re in sales and you let rejection stop you from making calls, booking appointments, and closing deals, that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re handing over your commission check to fear. That was the powerful insight from Wendy Ramirez, a leading Mexican sales expert and a...
Dec 02, 2025•14 min
Your prospects know when you’re waiting for your turn to talk. They can feel when you’re performing instead of partnering. And the moment they sense you’re treating them like a transaction, you’ve already lost the sale, or at least the loyalty that comes after it. The difference between good salespeople and unforgettable ones isn’t about closing techniques or fancy proposals. It’s about becoming the trusted sales advisor your buyers can’t imagine doing business without. It’s about evolving from ...
Nov 30, 2025•13 min
The automated “Great job, team!” email blasted to 47 people at 4:37 PM on a Friday isn’t authentic appreciation. Neither is the generic gift basket ordered by someone in HR who’s never met your top performer, or the corporate recognition program where nobody actually feels valued. These things look like recognition, but your people know the truth: leadership is outsourcing one of the most human tasks—seeing the people who show up every day and make things happen. And your teams feel the disconne...
Nov 27, 2025•36 min
