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Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

By: Jeb Blount
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 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 Career Success Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • Why Building Relationships in Sales Skyrockets Your Commission

    Why Building Relationships in Sales Skyrockets Your Commission
    Jun 20 2025
    You know the drill. The quota clock is ticking, the pressure is mounting, and there's that relentless urge for a quick win. Every sales professional has felt that impulse to rush the process, to push for the immediate "yes," because, well, the numbers demand it. But here's the tough question you need to ask yourself: What if that very pressure is actively sabotaging your long-term success? What if chasing the fast buck is actually costing you the lucrative, lasting relationships that define an elite sales career and build a lasting book of business? As Sales Gravy Podcast guest Steve Pyfrom puts it: “Building relationships takes time and sales, teams need desperately to get off of this short-term win dynamic. The goal is long-term revenue for your company, lifetime value for the end user.” Focusing solely on the quick sale burns through pipeline leads faster than you can replace them, leaving you on a perpetual hamster wheel of prospecting just to stay afloat. It's time to talk about the long game, because building real relationships is where sustainable revenue lives. Why Churn Is Killing Your Commissions Let's talk numbers. According to SimplicityDX, customer acquisition costs have increased by 222% over the last eight years, while customer lifetime value has remained flat. It's getting harder and more expensive to find new customers, making the ones you have incredibly valuable. Yet most salespeople treat customers like one-time transactions. They close the deal, celebrate briefly, then immediately move on to the next prospect. This approach is financial suicide. Customers who feel rushed through the buying process rarely become loyal advocates. When a customer feels pressured into a decision or perceives the sale as purely transactional, their loyalty is paper-thin. They're constantly looking for better deals, questioning their purchase decision, and jumping ship when problems arise. When a customer churns, you lose all potential referrals, upsells, and cross-sells they could have generated. You're back to square one, hunting for new prospects to replace the revenue you just lost, all while acquisition costs keep climbing. The Trust Equation That Changes Everything Most salespeople think selling is about convincing, but selling is about connecting. When you rush a prospect, you're telling them their decision-making process doesn't matter. You're saying your timeline is more important than their comfort level. Real relationships are built on trust, and trust takes time. Think about your personal life. Your closest friends aren't the people who tried to fast-track the process. They're the ones who showed up consistently, listened without an agenda, and proved their reliability over time. The same principle applies in sales. The prospects who become your biggest advocates aren't the ones you pressured into a quick yes. They're the ones who felt heard, understood, and genuinely cared for throughout the entire process. The Compound Effect of Relationship Selling Consider Mary, a software sales rep who was in competition with 2 other software vendors for a deal with a manufacturing company. Mary's competitors immediately launched into aggressive pitches and discount offers to David, the CFO, hoping to close the deal quickly. Mary took a different approach. Instead of pitching, she spent two months understanding David's cash flow challenges and upcoming board presentation needs. She shared relevant case studies, introduced him to a supply chain consultant, and helped him think through his decision criteria. She never once mentioned her software. When David's team raised concerns about implementation timelines during their evaluation, Mary's competitors pushed back, insisting their solution was simple to deploy. Mary listened, then connected David with a similar CFO who had successfully managed a comparable rollout. That conversation addressed David's real concerns and kept Mary's soluti...
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    Less than 1 minute
  • Can AI Really Replace Salespeople? (Ask Jeb)

    Can AI Really Replace Salespeople? (Ask Jeb)
    Jun 18 2025
    That's the question every sales leader, CEO, and HR department is wrestling with as AI tools flood the market with promises to automate everything from prospecting to closing deals. Meanwhile, salespeople are panicking, wondering if their jobs are about to disappear to some algorithm that can write emails faster than they can type "Dear Valued Customer." If you're losing sleep over this, take a deep breath. The fear is real, but it's also completely misplaced. Here's the brutal truth: AI isn't going to replace you. But salespeople who understand how to leverage AI absolutely will replace those who don't. When Robots Try to Sell It's Not Authentic Remember when email prospecting worked? When a well-crafted subject line could get you a meeting, and personalization meant more than just mail-merging someone's first name? Those days are over, and AI killed them in about nine months. Here's what happened: Marketing departments discovered they could use AI to blast out thousands of "personalized" emails that sounded human but weren't. They could fake voicemails using voice cloning technology. They could create sales sequences that felt authentic but were completely artificial. The result? Complete market saturation with fake outreach that destroyed trust across every communication channel. Humans Have a BS Detector for Fakeness Here's what these AI-obsessed companies don't understand: People have an incredibly sophisticated BS detector. We can sense inauthenticity from a mile away, even when the technology is nearly perfect. When you receive an email that sounds too polished, too perfect, or follows a pattern you've seen before, your brain immediately flags it as fake. When you hear a voicemail that sounds just slightly off—even if you can't pinpoint why—you delete it. But here's the real killer: Once people realize you were too lazy to write your own email or leave your own voicemail, they lose all respect for you. They think, "If this salesperson can't be bothered to put in the effort to reach out to me personally, then why would I want to do business with them?" The One Thing AI Can Never Do This is where the magic happens, and it's where your competitive edge lies. AI can write emails. It can analyze data. It can even fake phone calls (poorly). But it cannot engage in real-time, empathetic, synchronous conversation with another human being. It can't read micro-expressions during a video call. It can't pick up on the subtle hesitation in someone's voice that signals an unspoken objection. It can't pivot in real-time when the conversation takes an unexpected turn. Most importantly, it can't build the kind of authentic human connection that makes people want to buy from you instead of your competitor. The AI + Human Intelligence Formula Smart salespeople aren't running from AI—they're running toward it—but they're using it as a tool to make themselves better, faster, and stronger, not as a replacement for actual selling skills. Here's where AI excels in sales: Research and Preparation: AI can analyze a prospect's 10-K filing, research their competitors, and create discovery questions in minutes instead of hours. It can build detailed company profiles and identify potential pain points before you ever pick up the phone. Data Organization and Analysis: That timeline your manager needs for a customer service issue? AI can pull data from your CRM, email, and support tickets to create a comprehensive summary in seconds instead of the hours it would take you to compile it manually. Writing Enhancement: Most salespeople aren't great writers. Don't shoot the messenger. AI can help you craft better emails, proposals, and follow-up messages, but only if you edit them, personalize them, and make them authentically yours. The Holy Grail: Intelligent Prospecting Lists: The biggest opportunity is using AI to build high-quality prospecting lists. Imagine walking into the office and having AI presen...
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    17 mins
  • Busting the Myth About Natural Sales Talent (Money Monday)

    Busting the Myth About Natural Sales Talent (Money Monday)
    Jun 16 2025
    Is there such a thing as natural sales talent? Are top level sales professionals born that way? Do they possess a gift from God that powers their ability to close sales? On this Money Monday I answer these age old questions. For the Love of the Game When I was 9 years old, after going to the Masters tournament with my Dad, I cut a limb from a tree that was shaped like a golf club, dug holes all over our back yard, and started playing “backyard golf” with a wiffle ball. I loved my little back yard golf course and played every day after school. One day though, my Dad who had been watching me said, "Why don't we just go play real golf?" My dad didn't know anything about golf. He didn’t grow up playing. But we went down to Walmart, bought some cheap golf clubs, and started chasing little white balls. We played at a legendary course in Augusta called The Patch - a municipal course with hard dirt fairways and patchy greens but a super fun place to learn the game. We were terrible. We never practiced or tool a lesson. But I loved going out with my dad to the course and we had fun! In high school I started playing on the golf team. That might have been a turning point for my game if we’d had a real coach but instead we had a math teacher who did not play golf assigned to baby sit us. So, we were on our own but we had fun. Those years, playing on my high school golf team were a blast! In college I continued to play golf for recreation - usually with my fraternity brothers. Golf was about going out, telling jokes, and drinking a lot of beer. I have so many fun memories from those days. The Myth of Natural Talent Stole My Joy After getting out of college I continued to play - mostly in business situations - and that’s when Golf stopped being fun. I would golf with clients and peers who were so much better than me. It didn't make sense that they could hit the ball so well and I could not. I would go out to the range and practice until my arms hurt but I never got any better. It never occurred to me to take a lesson. By my mid-thirties I was so frustrated with golf that I started to believe something that would haunt me for the next twenty years: I convinced myself that people who could play golf well were just naturally gifted. And because I wasn't naturally gifted, I would never be good at golf. So I quit. For two decades, I didn't pick up a golf club. A Massive Mindset Shift Leads to a Comeback If you have read my books and listened to my podcasts you know that I'm a big horse person. I've been involved in equestrian sports since I was a kid. I've had formal coaching and training with horses. On horseback, I thought I was naturally gifted. I believed it was something that God had imbued in me. So I forgot about golf and poured my time and energy into horses. Eventually, though, my son got older and started playing golf. And being an equestrian at my age became more and more dangerous. A bad day on a horse means you're in the hospital in traction. A bad day on the golf course means you go to soothe your wounds with a cold beer in the clubhouse. So I picked up the sticks again. But this time, I sought out a golf coach. A pro who could help me learn how to play the game. Starting over has been hard. It is difficult to learn new skills. But with lessons, I've gotten better. In fact, last week I shot my lowest score ever. Over the past two years of working on my golf game I’ve come to realize how much the story that I kept telling myself about not being naturally talented hurt me and how much it stole from my life. That story cost me twenty years of enjoyment of a game I loved. The difference between my success with horses and my failure with golf wasn't natural talent. It was coaching, instruction, and having someone teach me the right way to do things. The Power of an Open vs Closed Mindset Once you stop believing that you have to be naturally gifted in order to do anything we...
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    12 mins
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