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.2025 Jeb Blount, All Rights Reserved Career Success Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • Why Great Salespeople Are Great Listeners (Ask Jeb)

    Why Great Salespeople Are Great Listeners (Ask Jeb)
    Jan 13 2026
    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 way into or out of anything. We've all seen it in movies, TV shows, and plays like Death of a Salesman. It's been around for a century, and it's completely wrong. The Truth Top Performers Know Here's what the best salespeople actually do: They listen. The greatest salespeople aren't the best talkers. They're the best listeners. They're individuals who know how to ask the right questions and know how to ask questions in a way that create these aha moments for prospects and customers. They understand something fundamental that average performers miss: Closing happens in the discovery process, not at some magical point where you lay the hammer down and ask for a sale. Think about that for a second. The deal isn't won when you deliver your polished presentation. It's not won when you overcome the final objection. It's won in those early conversations when you're asking questions, uncovering pain, and building relationships. Why the Stereotype Persists The negative stereotype of salespeople has been pervasive in society for generations. Part of it's because no one really likes to be sold. And there are salespeople who are bad. They talk at people instead of actually taking the time to listen. But here's the reality: Lots of professions have negative stereotypes. Lawyers. Politicians. Salespeople aren't the worst of them. And here's the good side of that negative stereotype: Nobody wants to be in sales. So if you're in sales, you're making a whole lot more money than anybody else. That's a good thing. The people who look at the profession of selling and say "I could never do that" or "I could never interrupt people or take that type of rejection" are the same people who will never experience the income, freedom, and impact that comes with being great at sales. The Power of Questions When you shift your mindset from talking to listening, everything changes. Instead of thinking about what you're going to say next, you're focused on what your prospect is telling you. You're asking questions like: What's driving this decision right now? What happens if you don't solve this problem? Who else is involved in this decision? What does success look like for you? These aren't manipulative tricks. They're genuine attempts to understand your prospect's world, their challenges, and their goals. And when you do that well, you create trust. You build relationships. You position yourself as a partner, not a vendor. The discovery questions you ask matter more than any pitch you could ever deliver. Handling objections starts with asking the right questions early in the process. Who's Really in Control Here's the truth: The person in control of the conversation is rarely the talker. In fact, it's almost always the listener. If you want to move deals, stop performing and start discovering. Build your calls around three things: smart opening questions, deep follow-ups, and crisp advances to the next step. You'll gain insights, not just air time. And insights are what close deals. Success in sales isn't about being the loudest voice in the room. It's about being the most curious, the most engaged, and the most intentional about moving the sale forward. What You Need to Unlearn Right Now If you've been operating under the assumption that you need to be a great talker to succeed in sales, unlearn that immediately. Replace it with this truth: You need to be a great asker and an even better listener. Your job isn't to convince people. Your job is to help people convince themselves by asking questions that lead them to their own conclusions. When prospects discover the solution themselves through your questioning, they own it. They believe it. And they buy. That's the relationship you build through asking questions. That matters the most. The Bottom Line Stop trying to out-talk your prospects. Stop preparing 47-slide presentations. Stop thinking that your job is to educate and inform. Your job is to discover. To listen. To understand. To ask the questions that help your prospects see clearly what they need to do next. The best salespeople aren't the smooth talkers. They're the smart listeners who know that the power of the sale is in the questions they ask, not the words they say. If you master this one fundamental truth, you'll close more deals than all the gift-of-gab salespeople combined. And you'll build a career based on relationships, trust, and value instead of pressure, manipulation, and empty talk. That's how you win in sales. That's ...
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    5 mins
  • Your Calendar Is Lying About Why You’re Not Prospecting (Money Monday)

    Your Calendar Is Lying About Why You’re Not Prospecting (Money Monday)
    Jan 12 2026
    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 prospecting optional. And optional activities don't close deals or pay commissions. The Meeting Excuse Is Killing Your Pipeline Sales professionals love to point at their calendars as evidence of why they can't prospect. Look at all these internal meetings. See how packed my schedule is. How could I possibly find time for outbound activity? The real question is: when did you last decline an internal meeting to protect your prospecting time? Most salespeople never have. They treat every meeting invitation as a welcome escape from the discomfort of cold outreach. It's the perfect alibi when your manager asks about pipeline activity. But your calendar tells the truth about your priorities. If time blocking for prospecting isn't on it, prospecting isn't actually a priority. And if prospecting isn't a priority, why exactly are you in sales? You Don't Need Hours—You Need 15 Minutes The biggest lie salespeople tell themselves is that prospecting requires massive blocks of uninterrupted time. Two hours minimum. Otherwise, why bother starting? This is the same mental trap that keeps people from reading, exercising, or learning new skills. They convince themselves that 15 minutes isn't enough to matter, so they do nothing instead. Consider this: reading for 15 minutes daily gets you through 20-25 books per year. Walking for 15 minutes adds nearly a mile to your day. Fifteen minutes of focused prospecting can generate six to ten cold calls, dozens of personalized connection requests, or several high-impact video messages to ghosting prospects. The power isn't in the duration, but in consistent, focused execution of time blocking for sales activities. The 15-Minute Power Block Rules These 3 rules are requirements if you want your time blocking strategy to actually work. Rule 1: Single-task only. Your 15-minute prospecting block is for prospecting. Not prospecting while monitoring email. Not prospecting between Slack messages. Just prospecting. If you spend three minutes calling and twelve minutes scrolling Instagram, you didn't prospect for 15 minutes. Rule 2: Everything else can wait. Yes, that includes your boss. You will not lose a customer or your job because you ignored email for 15 minutes. Responding at the end of your block is still professional. Think about it—if you were sitting face-to-face with your top client, would you stop mid-conversation to check email? Treat your power blocks with the same respect. Rule 3: Protect the block like your commission depends on it. Because it does. Top performers don't ask permission to prospect. They schedule it, block it, and defend it against every interruption. The coworker who needs "just a minute" can wait sixteen minutes. What Actually Happens in 15 Minutes Specificity kills procrastination. You're more likely to execute when you know exactly what you're doing during your time blocking windows. Eight to fifteen cold calls fit comfortably in 15 minutes. That's enough to connect with two or three decision-makers if you're efficient. Send ten to fifteen LinkedIn connection requests to stakeholders outside your network. Write and mail three handwritten notes to accounts you closed this month. Record personalized video messages for three prospects who've gone dark. None of these activities requires elaborate preparation or perfect conditions. They require you to show up for 15 minutes and do the work. That's it. Schedule Your Priorities or Someone Else Will Stephen Covey said the key isn't prioritizing your schedule, but scheduling your priorities. Most salespeople do the opposite—they let their calendars fill with whatever lands there first, then wonder why revenue-generating work never happens. Your calendar should reflect your income goals. If hitting quota requires consistent prospecting, your calendar should show consistent prospecting blocks. If building relationships with key accounts matters, those touchpoints should be scheduled. When you schedule your sales priorities first, everything else fits around them. When you don't, everything else crowds them out entirely. Look at your calendar right now. How many prospecting blocks do you see this week? If the answer is zero, you've just identified why your pipeline feels thin. How to Apply Time Blocking Starting Now Open your calendar and block three 15-minute windows for prospecting tomorrow. Morning, midday, and late afternoon. Label them "Prospecting Power Block" and set them as busy. Before each block, decide on one ...
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    9 mins
  • Why Sales Professionals Fail at New Year’s Fitness Goals (And How to Actually Succeed)

    Why Sales Professionals Fail at New Year’s Fitness Goals (And How to Actually Succeed)
    Jan 8 2026
    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 straight to the real reason most January fitness resolutions fail: they're trying to add more to an already overflowing plate. The typical sales professional is already drowning in competing priorities while operating at maximum capacity. When New Year’s hits, the instinct is to overhaul everything at once. New diet. New workout plan. New morning routine. That approach might work for people with open calendars and low pressure. For salespeople pushing through Q1 kickoffs, territory planning, and quota pressure, it is a fast track to burnout. The All-or-Nothing Trap Meet Steve. He's an individual contributor who decided January 1st would mark his transformation. No more coffee. Five-mile runs every morning. Intermittent fasting. Four hours of cold calling daily because he just finished reading Fanatical Prospecting. Ten days in, Steve slept through his alarm, missed his workout, and ordered a triple-shot latte on the way to work. That emotional crash bled into his work. His prospecting activity dropped. His confidence dipped. His motivation evaporated under the weight of his own perfectionism. Steve's mistake wasn't lack of commitment. He turned ambitious goals into self-sabotage by refusing to acknowledge a simple truth: sustainable change requires starting where you are, not where you wish you were. Most sales professionals approach fitness goals like they approach pipeline building—more activity equals better results. But health doesn't work like prospecting. You can't brute force your way into better sleep or lower stress. The body requires a different strategy. The 110% Capacity Problem Sales is a cognitively demanding profession. You're the quarterback of the business. Every day requires strategic thinking, relationship management, objection handling, and staying mentally sharp through rejection. When you're already operating at 110% capacity, adding extreme fitness commitments creates another obligation you can't meet, another source of stress, another thing to feel guilty about when you inevitably miss a workout or eat fast food between calls. The sales professionals who successfully improve their health identify which habits will support their performance, then build them into their existing routine. They do not chase trends. They focus on fundamentals. The Four Pillars of Health for Sales Professionals Fitness and health goals for sales professionals need to be realistic for people working at maximum capacity. You can't afford to waste energy on complicated protocols or fitness fads. You need the fundamentals: exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress management. When these four pillars are strong, everything else becomes easier. Pillar One: Exercise The fitness industry wants you to believe you need intense workouts, complicated programs, and hours at the gym. For sales professionals, the single most effective exercise habit is walking 8,000 steps daily. This number is achievable for most people regardless of fitness level. It builds momentum without requiring a complete schedule overhaul. When you consistently hit 8,000 steps, you prove to yourself that you can follow through on a commitment without sacrificing your work performance. Movement improves cognitive function, reduces stress hormones, and helps with sleep quality—all critical for sales performance. Make it automatic. Take calls while walking. Park farther away from the office. Walk to get coffee instead of ordering delivery. Use a standing desk and pace during internal meetings. Build movement into what you are already doing rather than treating it as another task. Once 8,000 steps become effortless, you can layer in strength training or other activities. But walking is the foundation. It's the one exercise habit that compounds without breaking you. Pillar Two: Nutrition Sales professionals tend to fall into two nutrition traps. The first is eating like garbage because they're too busy to care. The second is attempting some extreme diet overhaul that lasts nine days before they're back to their old patterns. The solution isn't meal plans or macro tracking or cutting entire food groups. It's having a system that works when you're slammed. Start here: don't skip meals. When you're running between meetings and surviving on coffee, your blood sugar crashes. That kills your cognitive performance and drives you toward quick fixes that leave you feeling worse an hour later. Keep protein-rich foods accessible. Greek yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, ...
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    34 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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