Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount Podcast By Jeb Blount cover art

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.2026 Jeb Blount, All Rights Reserved Career Success Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • How to Save Neglected Accounts Before They Disappear (Ask Jeb)

    How to Save Neglected Accounts Before They Disappear (Ask Jeb)
    Jan 20 2026
    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 relationships with customers who’ve been collecting dust. If you’re nodding your head right now, you’re not alone. Poor account management is quietly bleeding companies dry, and most leaders have no idea how much revenue they’re leaving on the table. The Brutal Truth About Why Customers Leave When we survey customers through our consulting projects with clients who are hemorrhaging accounts, here’s what we find: About 70 percent of the time, customers don’t leave because of price. They don’t leave because of product quality or service issues. They leave because they feel taken for granted. Let me give you a real example. I pay six figures annually for a software program that’s critical to my business. Every time my contract comes up for renewal, it’s like a circus. They fly people in. They wine and dine me. They promise the moon about how they’re going to support us and be our partner. Then once the contract is signed? Crickets. My account manager disappears for three years. If I don’t call them, they don’t call me. And here’s the thing: I actually like my account manager. I genuinely want to work with them. There are products I could buy, optimizations we could make, but I have to do all the work to make it happen. This is insane. And it’s costing companies millions. What Won’t Work: The Rookie Mistakes So you’ve inherited these neglected accounts. Here’s what you absolutely cannot do: Show up on their doorstep apropos of nothing and try to sell them something. If I’m an existing customer doing business with your company, and you show up trying to pitch me without acknowledging the elephant in the room, we’re probably done. It’s rude. It’s bad behavior. And it tells me you’re just like every other transactional vendor who doesn’t actually care about my business. The second mistake is spreading yourself too thin across all 50 accounts without any strategy. You’ll burn out, deliver mediocre service to everyone, and end up losing accounts you could have saved. The Human-to-Human Approach That Actually Works Here’s what does work: Be honest. Be human. Name the problem. Pick up the phone and say something like this: “Hey, I’m your new account manager. I recognize that no one’s contacted you in a while, and I’m sorry about that. I apologize. I’d like to do a fresh start. Would you give me the opportunity to get to know you better and learn about what’s important to you?” That’s it. Simple. Direct. Human. Now here’s the hard part: When you have that conversation, some customers are going to unload on you. If they really have felt taken for granted, they’re going to say some nasty things. They might complain about the last account manager. They might air grievances about problems that have been festering for months. And the most important thing you can do in that moment is shut up and listen. Don’t try to defend the past. Don’t talk over them. Don’t promise you’re going to be so much better than the last person. Just let them get it all off their chest. Let them talk it out, because people like people who listen to them. Then, if there’s something specific you can help them with, don’t make promises you can’t keep. Commit to one thing. Take care of that commitment. Honor it. Build trust slowly. That’s how you become a high-value partner through fanatical prospecting discipline applied to account management. The Smart Way to Triage 50 Accounts You can’t effectively manage 50 accounts with equal attention, so you need to segment fast. Use a simple A, B, C ranking by revenue and risk: A Accounts: Your largest customers or those at highest risk of churn. These get weekly or bi-weekly touchpoints. B Accounts: Solid mid-tier customers with growth potential. These get monthly check-ins. C Accounts: Smaller accounts that are stable. These get quarterly touchpoints. But here’s the secret weapon most account managers miss: Use AI and your CRM data to find the low-hanging fruit. Look for patterns like former buyers who’ve moved to new companies in your territory, customers who mentioned specific challenges in past conversations, or accounts showing signs of expansion readiness. One of the smartest things you can do is ask your AI tools: “Did anyone on this account ever mention their favorite sports team? Do they like to cook? What matters to them personally?” Those human details are gold for building real relationships in ...
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    15 mins
  • Where Confidence Comes From and Why it Matters in Sales

    Where Confidence Comes From and Why it Matters in Sales
    Jan 19 2026
    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 business people 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 they're going to buy from you. When you've practiced your presentation multiple times and know it 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 ...
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    14 mins
  • Turn Boring Sales Pitches Into Conversations That Close

    Turn Boring Sales Pitches Into Conversations That Close
    Jan 15 2026
    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. 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’...
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    43 mins
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I listen to this everyday on the way to work. Most engaging sales podcast I’ve found to date. Lots of great material in here from experienced sales professionals that have also experienced the grind day in and day out. Pick up the phone!

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