Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

By: Jeb Blount
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  • Summary

  • From the author of Fanatical Prospecting and the company that re-invented sales training, the Sales Gravy Podcast helps you win bigger, sell better, elevate your game, and make more money fast.
    2025 Jeb Blount, All Rights Reserved
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Career Success Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
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Episodes
  • How Coaching Transforms Sales Performance and Culture (Ask Jeb)

    How Coaching Transforms Sales Performance and Culture (Ask Jeb)
    Apr 2 2025
    Dennis from Chesterfield, Missouri, wants to know if sales coaching truly moves the performance needle, especially when shifting from transactional approaches to more consultative selling. Below are the key insights from our conversation on why coaching matters, how it boosts sales and culture, and what leaders should do right now to make it happen. Why Sales Coaching Is Essential Sales is a skill position. Even the best reps lose their edge if they’re left on their own for too long. Much like elite athletes, sales professionals need ongoing input to fine-tune their mechanics, recharge their motivation, and keep small errors from turning into big problems. Coaching can be the difference between a rep who has plateaued and one who keeps climbing—because it provides immediate, personalized feedback when it counts most. From Knowledge Acquisition to Knowledge Application Training is vital for learning new strategies, product details, and selling techniques, but it doesn’t guarantee that anyone will actually use those ideas. That’s where coaching comes in. A coach helps each individual absorb and adapt those lessons to their unique style, role, or territory. Research shows that simply sending people to training without one-on-one follow-up leads to a big dip in retention and performance. But when coaching supports training, skill application soars—along with results. Leading, Managing, and Coaching: The Three Pillars of Leadership Sales leadership has three core pillars. Leading sets the emotional vision of where the team is headed. It's getting people emotionally connected to a future state. Managing is driving the step by step processes that execute strategy. Coaching is developing your people to execute at a high level. It is the force that keeps every member of the rowing in the right direction. Think about it this way. 90% of strategy (leading) is execution (managing) AND 90% of execution is people (coaching). Everything depends on people which is why you can’t afford not to coach. Sales Leadership and Coaching Priorities Leaders who prioritized weekly one-on-ones, real-time one-to-one coaching, and rigorous sales pipeline reviews consistently deliver better results and productivity. One of my top clients reconfigured its leadership approach with inside sales reps, focusing on call-by-call coaching in real time. While the broader industry shrank, this company grew by over 20%. The common thread? Leaders were present. They weren’t waiting for problems to surface; they intervened early and often, guiding reps through each challenge. Why Simply Showing Up Makes a Difference Leaders sometimes fear that sitting with their reps will feel intrusive, yet just being there raises performance. When a coach or manager listens in on a sales call or rides along on an outside sales appointment, reps immediately sharpen their focus. They’re more likely to use proven techniques and avoid shortcuts. Even better is when the leader offers coaching in the moment—helping the rep pivot if the call starts going sideways. Catching issues before they snowball is how reps maintain a consistently high standard of performance. The Power of Being Side by Side One sales organization I work with discovered, after a big dip in sales productivity, that none of its sales managers were spending time on the floor. Rather than spending time on the sales floor coaching, the leaders were in their offices, behind closed doors grading calls. As soon as the managers started actively coaching—right next to their people, live—the entire team’s win-rates rose sharply. True coaching works best in real time, because your rep can implement what they just learned to get better on the next call. The Culture Shift from Transactional to Consultative When a coach is on the floor or in the car, they can see how a rep handles difficult questions, responds to objections, or frames value to a hesitant buyer.
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    13 mins
  • Q1 Sales Performance Gut Check

    Q1 Sales Performance Gut Check
    Mar 30 2025
    This is a very important Monday because this is the first Monday of the second quarter and it’s time for a major gut check and assessment of where you are against your number, coming out of Q1 and what you need to adjust and think about as we move into Q2. Start with setting aside a dedicated, focused time block of one to two hours for reviewing your: Q1 Results Current state of your pipeline 2025 goals & Personal business plan Evaluate Your Q1 Performance Against Your Sales Goals Begin with an honest evaluation of your Q1 sales performance it’s likely that your performance falls into one of three scenarios, You Crushed It – You had a killer quarter, blew away your goals, and you are walking on cloud nine. You Hit Quota – You on track and right where you are supposed to be against your number You are in trouble – You missed your number, are behind quota, and are feeling the pressure. Incredible Quarter If You Crushed it, and you’re on the top of the ranking report congratulations, this is exactly where you want to be at the end of Q1. Being ahead of your number now is an insurance policy against unforeseen setbacks in the future. It can also make life much easier if your sales plan and quota gets bigger in the back half of the year as many do. The most important thing you can do right now is conduct a deep dive analysis of your pipeline. It’s not unusual to work hard to close so many deals at the end of the quarter that you start off in a weak position at the beginning of the quarter. Get your calculator out and do the math on how much you need in your pipeline to crush your Q2 number. Then get to work immediately building the pipe you need to hit that goal. But do not wait to do this. With a great quarter behind you, the temptation will be there to take a breather and take your foot off of the accelerator. After all, you deserve it. But be very careful if your pipeline needs work, the failure to take immediate action will come back to bite you. If you feel a bit burned out from working so hard to deliver such a great quarter, it might make sense to take a few days off to rest, recover, and recommit to your goals or raise the bar with stretch goals. You’ve set the foundation for what could be a massive year and a trip to President’s Club, take advantage of what you accomplished in Q1 to get even better in Q2. Right on Quota If you hit your quota in Q1 and ended up right where you should be, nice job! Quota isn’t easy to achieve. You’ve executed and done exactly what your company asked you to do. You’ve kept your promise. Your biggest challenge now is that it's not going to get any easier as the year progresses. You'll need to keep executing and keep grinding. For you, this is a good time to step back and take a look at what is working well for you, where you can improve, and where you may have gotten off track. It’s a good time to reacquaint yourself with the basics and fundamentals that create success in both sales and your industry. Of course, after battling it out in Q1 you may need to refill your tank. This is the perfect time to double down on investing in yourself. With so much volatility in the market place in the moment I highly recommend listening to my book Selling in a Crisis on Audible or Spotify taking my courses on selling during uncertainty on Sales Gravy University at learn.salesgravy.com I’ve always found that investing in myself and learning gives me a boost of energy and motivation when I need it the most. Bad Quarter: You are In Trouble If you had a bad Q1 and you are behind your number then you are likely in trouble and are feeling the pressure. You may have already been put on a plan which is not fun. The good news is that this is survivable if you choose to survive. I know this isn’t where you want to be. No-one tanks their sales number on purpose. But where you are now is almost always a result of small slips ...
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    9 mins
  • Top 5 Sales Improvement Tips From Q1 Podcast Episodes

    Top 5 Sales Improvement Tips From Q1 Podcast Episodes
    Mar 27 2025
    Great advice is everywhere, but most of it is fluff. In sales, you don’t need clichés—you need real strategies that help you win more deals. We’ve pulled together five of the biggest game-changing sales tips from the Sales Gravy Podcast so far this year. These are proven tactics from top sales pros who know what it takes to close deals, stay sharp, and dominate the competition. If you want to crush your numbers, start here. The Grind Gets You Gold You won’t become a sales expert overnight. But you can practice your way to excellence and then—one day—reach elite levels of selling. As sales guru Tony Morris said, “You get out what you put in. … You don’t have to be the greatest; you’ve got to be the hardest [worker].” In other words, be ready to roll up your sleeves and get in the trenches. Everyone sees the skills of great athletes, but not everyone considers all the consistent work it took to hit that home run or make that perfect golf swing. Sales success is no different—it’s the result of countless daily reps, not just the big wins. Top performers make it all look fluid—like a dance that should be easy to learn. But it’s not. Developing sales acumen takes time and massive effort, plus dedication to the grind. You have to dedicate time every day to getting better—no matter what. Practice is an integral part of the grind. Drill your frameworks. Roleplay with mentors. Ask for feedback. You have to pick up the phone and make calls no one else will—that’s how you win. Don’t give up before you see results. You Must Learn to Sell Once you’ve learned the basics, the grind perfects them. But you better start with some solid foundational skills. Sales strategist Dawnna St. Louis puts it this way: “The first thing you need to do is learn to sell.” Because trying to sell without knowing how to sell is an uphill climb that most never finish. Learn to sell, or risk losing everything. It’s an ultimatum that no sales rep can afford to ignore. Even the best subject matter experts fail without sales skills. Take courses and identify a mentor—a seasoned veteran who can provide feedback on your calls and negotiation techniques. Find a personal sales coach to teach you the ropes. Perfect Your Digital Profile Stick to the simple; nix the jargon. As Breaking B2B Founder Sam Dunning says, “Does it pass the Caveman Grunt test?” Given a few seconds, could a caveman successfully grunt what you do based on your website—or your social media presence—alone? If not, you’re in trouble. No one is going to buy from you if they don’t understand what you do or your expertise. A website is the online lobby of a business—the introduction to your service or product for potential digital customers. But take Dunning’s advice one step further and apply it to your Linkedin profile and social media accounts that are your lobby to your potential customers. Lean into the basics: Who are you? What do you do? Why should a customer pick you? The quality of your messaging can encourage prospects to reach out to you or establish you as a trustworthy source of business. Create content that positions you as a thought leader and advisor. Otherwise? Your social presence is useless. Wasted Time is the Enemy Time is the one commodity that you can’t replenish. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. That’s why you must dedicate time to filling your pipeline every week. Protect your Golden Hours at all costs and then use that time wisely to make as many calls as you can. Whether you’re in the same building or your team includes remote workers, pick a mutual time and start dialing numbers. As best-selling author and sales expert Jeb Blount put it in a recent Ask Jeb, “Pick a period of time and say ‘We’re going to run call blocks.’ … Be ready with your list and we’re going to chop wood.” Eat the frog—carve out specific time to focus on your hardest task of the day.
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    14 mins

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