Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

On this inspiring episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) talks to Brian Knox, owner and founder of B Knox Photography. This young entrepreneur leveraged Fanatical Prospecting to quickly ramp up his successful and fast-growing photography business that he started this year. This conversation about sales and entrepreneurship is both educational and inspirational. Sales and the things that we do in sales matter, wherever we are in life. And we can all chase and achieve our dreams if we just make the decision to take action.     Listen all Sales Gravy Podcast episodes here. Brian: Why I Started My Business I was in corporate life from the time I graduated college in 2000, all the way up until 2020, and the last four jobs that I had in the corporate world were inside sales and customer service. Then between 2013 and 2015, I moved into more of a pure sales role where I was cold calling.  Our training was basically watching a guy do it for two days. Then they hand you a computer and a phone and you’re kind of on your own. There wasn’t a lot of sales training. That was when I first found your material, because I was honestly trying to ease the pain of, “How do I sit here for eight hours a day and drum up business?” I was averse to it. Then, I moved into a sales coaching role with a local plumbing, air, and electric company where I was teaching their technicians some of the basics of sales psychology, and going out in the field, and helping them with their sales process. After that, I was in development at Habitat for Humanity of Greenville, which was essentially a sales role. That’s where I put into practice what I had learned in those first few years, and what I was teaching the guys on the field, in order to bring in donations for Habitat for Humanity. I finally left that job to start the photography business full-time in February of this year. Brian: What Photography Means to Me I got my first digital camera in 2004 or 2005. My dad was into photography. He didn’t train me, but I was at least exposed to him having a camera. When I got my own digital camera, that kind of launched it for me. It was very simple to make art by just going out and clicking a shutter. I did it as a hobby and on the side. I started picking up initial gigs, which were typically family. I chugged along making a little money for about ten years. But then I began to apply sales techniques to what was my side hustle, at that point. I started to get traction with that and then I went through six months of wrestling with the question, “Do I quit and go full time with this, or do I just kind of keep it as a side thing?” I felt that it was more of a contribution to society and to the world to take my skill and talent and give that in the form of photography, as opposed to being in the sales trenches.  Jeb: On Entrepreneurial Journeys I remember when I first started Sales Gravy 13 years ago, we were in the middle of the Great Recession and I had to make a pivot in my career. I decided that at that point in my life, I was either going to be an entrepreneur, or not. I always wanted to run my own business. Because I was good at selling and great in the corporate world, there wasn’t a lot of incentive until I found myself on the street trying to figure out what I was going to do. But for about three years, I was constantly terrified that I was going to fail. I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Like, am I going to make it, am I going to have to crawl back and beg for a job? What was it like when you first started? And are you still in that place of, “Do I let go of what I’m used to”? Brian: If You Try, You Can’t Fail It’s gone really well this year, but I definitely have those same concerns. I also remember waking up in the middle of the night and wrestling with things like, “Well, what if it rains that whole next day? Then I can’t do the outdoor construction shoot, so I don’t make any money.” Your brain just goes to all of these irrational places about why you’re going to fail. Someone told me to remember that it’s reversible. If at some point it’s not going well, you can turn around and go back and get a day job or a W2 job. You also hear people say to burn the boats and don’t give yourself an opportunity to go back, then you’ll drive yourself to success. I was in that first group that was like, I’m going to go try this. I’ll regret it if I don’t. And if all else fails, then I can go back and get a regular job. The stakes were higher because I had the Habitat job, which was the best job that I ever had. Those are the best people. It was the best mission. It was my favorite job. I felt like if I failed, I’d have to go back to something that just wasn’t as great. But if you go out and try, I don’t see it as a failure. If you don’t have great success, and you do have to turn around, I think the credit still goes to the person in the arena, the person who goes out and tries their hand at their dream.  Jeb: Attracting Customers in A Competitive Industry I think there’s a lot to be said about how your belief system and your attitude attract people and opportunities into your life. I believe that about prospecting as well. I think the salespeople who are prospecting get lucky. It’s not always a direct, “I talked to this person, therefore I get”, but more like, “I talked to this person, they told somebody that links with somebody else, my phone rings.”And sometimes we don’t put all those dots together, but I do believe that’s true.  Photography is one of those professions where people have that dream and then they get into it and they don’t realize how insanely competitive it is. Everybody wants to be a photographer. Many people get into photography and very quickly exit because they find it hard to make a living. I think this is important for salespeople as well. They’re out there thinking, “Man, my competitors, they got lower prices, they got this, they’re beating me up, blah, blah, blah.” You jumped into one of the most competitive industries in the world and tried to make a living in it. Talk to me about that.  Brian: People Buy You I think people buy you. I really believe that. The marketplace is super crowded. There are a hundred other photographers that can come and take your real estate listing photos, your headshot photos, your company’s website photos, and do it well. You really end up, especially as an entrepreneur, selling yourself, your vision, your passion, your process, how you go through homework before the shoot, your personality, and how you respond to texts and emails. Jumping into a crowded marketplace is daunting, but in another way, it really lets you express yourself fully and be who you are. By being a little different, by being unique in some way, you can separate yourself from the competition. I just started to sell myself. I shared my life and my photos on social media, and that started to attract what I’ve been able to build into a pipeline.  Jeb: Real World Applications — Clients in Real Estate The more people you talk with, the more pictures you take, the more clients you have, the more opportunities that come in. Let’s break down the real estate example. If you’re working with a couple of brokers and they’re listing houses, what they really want is they want to trust that you’re going to pick up the phone when they call. You’re going to go get the job done. You’re going to go get the photos that they want because you’ve taken time to understand them. And then you’re going to get it up and running for them fast on Zillow so that they don’t have to think about it, so they can go focus on real estate. They could probably go take the pictures themselves, right? But they want to go knock on another door and get another listing.  Brian: Time is Money Exactly. I’m not selling just a well-exposed bedroom photograph, I’m selling that real estate agent their time back. I was able to understand the value of sales. I started to see it in my own journey, my own life. The realtors are selling their butts off every day. They can have another meeting, another coffee, get another contract. That’s what’s paying their bills. Shooting photos is a very low-value activity for them. That’s what I would put right in the copy I would send to real estate agents. I’m not saying my photos are tremendously better than anyone else’s, but you can trust me and rely on me to operate efficiently so that you can move on to a higher leverage activity, like getting the next lead into your pipeline.  Jeb: Problem Solvers Are The Champions of The World Problem solvers are the champions of the world. Photographers, they’re pitching pictures, but you’re pitching what your pictures solve. It’s the service. It’s peace of mind. For example, if you’re taking pictures of a wedding or of someone’s family pictures, there’s a lot of emotion involved. What I’ve found with those types of relationships is that it’s the photographer that sits down and creates the entire experience. It’s not just that they’re snapping photos, but they’re sitting down and talking with us and asking us, what do you want? And what’s important to you? What do you want to capture? What are you looking for? What are your family values? And by listening to us and making us feel like we’re part of the process. Then there’s the artwork on the back end to make them look the way that you want them to look. But it’s still the same thing. It’s not about the picture, it’s about the emotion that we feel while we’re working with that individual person. And it’s that emotion that causes us to tell other people. Your buyer’s emotional experience while they’re working with you is a more consistent predictor of outcome than any other variable. You said this, people buy you, right? But you have to talk to people.  As an entrepreneur, you have to be fanatical about prospecting. You have to be a nut job about building your business. Many entrepreneurs forget about the selling side as they’re building this ideal vision of what their business is going to be. And in the meantime, they don’t make any money while they’re building their blog and putting together their business cards. How do you remain consistent in your business development practices while you’re running the rest of your business? Brian: Always Show Your Work I think a great tactical shortcut right here is to show your work. That’s how I started this job. I would go shoot. The photos I would shoot, I would edit them. I’d post them to Facebook. Shoot, edit, post to Facebook. Then I started to get traction: “Hey, can you come out and shoot the swim meet?” “Hey, can you come out and shoot me with my dog?” “Hey, our company needs new website photos.” So it started to build a little bit organically. When I was showing my work, I wasn’t waiting to be discovered. It’s one of those big soapbox topics that’ll get me cranked up like an old van. You’re not going to get discovered. No one’s going to discover you. You have to show your work. I think people will be better served by consistently putting their stuff out there instead of sitting back and thinking, “I’m excellent. I’m a killer photographer. Why aren’t companies finding me?” They’re not going to find you. Sometimes you have to pursue, and you should pursue the ones that you want to work with because they will say yes, eventually. Brian: Finding Balance As An Entrepreneur It’s easy to start to reach overwhelm when you’re the sole proprietor and you’re doing the billing, marketing, shooting, and everything else. I’ve stayed pretty close to burnout much of this year, I can say. But I’m also very excited by the possibility of selling, and I very much believe in it. I wrestle with the fact that I have a lot of business and this is great, but at the same time, I want to be selling more. I’ve just kind of wondered, how do I throttle between driving or pursuing the business that I want, but also delivering on the day-to-day? I think part of the answer lies in curating the type of business that you’ve taken. I said yes to every job when I first started, and it’s just not the best technique. I realized that every yes that I’m telling a company is also saying no to another opportunity.  Jeb: Say Yes To The Right People When I started Sales Gravy, I took anything because I had to build. Some of those yeses came back to haunt me because they were taking me away from other things. Some of them turned out to be the greatest yeses I ever said yes to, because they changed the organization. I don’t think, as an entrepreneur, you have much of a choice. It’s really nice to idealistically say that all customers aren’t good customers, but when you’re trying to pay the light bill, any customer is a good customer. I think what happens over time is that there’s a curve. As you grow and get more mature, you can be pickier with what you want. It’s no different for a salesperson. If you’ve got a full pipeline, you can be really picky about the deals that you’re going to work on so that you spend your time on the most lucrative deals with the highest probability of closing. If you’ve got an empty pipeline, you’re going to take anybody that calls or says yes. You’re going to show up. You’re going to drive across town for eight hours, in order to go see a company for 20 minutes that may or may not do business with you, ever. But when you’re full, you don’t have to. This is part of being an entrepreneur. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying yes when you get started. You just start teaching yourself what not to do through the mistakes that you make. Jeb: The 30-Day Rule We talk about the 30-day rule in Fanatical Prospecting. The prospecting you do in any given 30-day period has a tendency to pay off over the next 90 days. In other words, the work that you’re doing now to connect with people will start to pay off in the next 90 days. Well, you take a week, two weeks, three weeks, or four weeks off, then suddenly you’re on the desperation rollercoaster. Too many entrepreneurs live in the feast or famine amusement park. It’s up and down, up and down, up and down. Salespeople do the same thing. It’s an awful way to live because there’s so much anxiety, stress, and pressure. Then what do you do? You make really bad decisions. You start saying yes to everything again, and you don’t want to do that. It is key for entrepreneurs to schedule time every single day for business development. Clearly, there’s going to be some days where you can’t always do that. My advice is to never let a day go by that you don’t do something, even if it’s just five minutes. You said something earlier about passion, and I love the way you explained it. The way I look at passion is that it’s awesome to be able to follow your passion. But it is way better to bring your passion with you wherever you go and with whatever you’re doing. You need that passion to help you do the hard things. Working on a project, serving your client, taking care of them — that’s the fun stuff. Calling a stranger, cold calling, reaching out, going to networking events, following up on things — that’s the hard stuff. As an entrepreneur, if you’re not willing to do the hard work, what you have is a hobby, rather than a business that you can grow.  Jeb: How to Scale Up The Right Way My advice is that you’re going to reach some level of success where you have to start making some decisions about what type of business you’re going to be. Are you going to continue to be a sole proprietor business where you’re doing all the work, or are you going to scale? If you do scale, you have to bring on other photographers, because you’re a good salesperson. You can cover sales for a while, but you can’t cover the work. So you have to go out and bring more business in and bring another photographer in. The more photographers you bring in, the more you can scale up. They don’t have to go prospect, because there’s a lot of people out there whose ideal is to be a photographer, but they don’t want to hustle the way you’re willing to. As a result, you have the opportunity to build a much bigger business you can grow into. Brian: Active Versus Passive Income You’re right. I don’t know exactly what that looks like for me yet. I’m still kind of young in the business and just want to figure out how to design my life. I don’t want to create a soul-sucking job or a tremendous amount of stress. But I do have to relieve that active income versus passive income gap somehow. It’s very active income right now, so I have to be on-site with a camera. But I am definitely looking at ways to try to change that percentage a little bit. Jeb: It’s All About The Hustle and Making Connections The good news is that you know how to sell. Find something that you like to do that you’re good at. Then understand that just because you’re good at it, just because you’re talented at it, that’s not enough. It’s all about hustle and your ability to make connections, talk with people, build relationships, and build your business. If you get really good at that, if you can sell, then you can accomplish anything. And entrepreneurship is selling at its heart and soul. If you have one last piece of advice for our listeners from what you’ve learned over the years, whether they’re salespeople or entrepreneurs, what would you leave us with?  Brian: Get Out There and Talk to People I hear this a lot from entrepreneurs: “I don’t like to self-promote,” “I don’t want to sell myself,” “I don’t know how to do it,” et cetera. You can actually get around a lot of that by talking to people every day. It might take the form of texts, direct messages, phone calls, or emails. You should be passionate about your work, and be good at it. As Jim Rohn says, even if you approach someone and ask, “Hey, you don’t want my service, do you?” Eventually, someone will say, “Maybe I do. Tell me about it.” When you infuse it with passion and you’re decent at it, people will want your service or product. Get out there and talk to people. The more people you talk with, the more you’re going to sell.

Sales Myth: You Have to Sell Yourself Most of us, at one time or another in our careers, have heard some trainer or manager exclaim, “You have to sell yourself.” “If you want to get that job, son, you have to sell yourself.” “The real key to sales is your ability to sell yourself.” “If you want others to like you, you’ll have to sell yourself.” The Sell Yourself Cliche This philosophy is prevalent in business culture. A while back, I was at an Ivy League University for a speech by a successful businessman to a group of MBA students from the top business schools in the world. The speaker was so well respected that when he walked into the room there was a hush. The audience members were on the edge of their seats in anticipation. And what was the message? What was the secret of success that this revered businessman offered? “Never forget how important it is in business to first sell yourself.” The entire audience nodded in unison. For this wise man and many others, the phrase sell yourself  has become an easy-to-use cliche´. It just rolls off the tongue. Like the audience at the speech I attended, most people will nod their heads in agreement to the statement as if some prophet on a hill had just read it from stone tablets. People Buy You for Their Reasons, Not Yours Sales expert and bestselling author Jeffrey Gitomer teaches a simple philosophy, “People love to buy but they hate to be sold.” In other words, most people prefer to buy on their terms. They do not want or appreciate a hard pitch or a features dump. They buy for their reasons not yours. Yet daily salespeople across the globe, on the phone, video calls, email, social media, and in person, sell to their customers by dumping data, pushing their position, or simply trying to talk their way into a sale. They sell themselves to anyone else they can get to stand still for more than five minutes. But it does not work, because people like to buy, they don’t like to be sold. When You Try to Sell Yourself You Push People Away The harder you try to sell yourself to others, the more you push them away. A conversation where the other person tells you all about themselves, their accomplishments, and how great they are is a turnoff. It is a features dump. Think about it, the most unlikeable human in the world is the person standing in front of you talking about themself. You don’t walk away from that conversation thinking how much you would like to spend more time with them. Instead you think, “What a jerk,” or “How boring,” or “Wow,  that guy is full of himself.” We Love to Talk About Our Favorite Person Still, we do love the opportunity to sell ourselves. Most of us, if given the opportunity, will talk for hours about our favorite person, oblivious to the negative impact it has on how we are viewed by others. When pressed, experts who are quick to tell you to sell yourself, are unable to explain exactly how to do it. Sure, they will offer tips, but it’s mostly hyperbole. Here is the brutal truth: You cannot sell yourself to others; you have to get others to buy you on their terms. You’re Talking, They Aren’t Buying Even if you are preceded by a great reputation and others are anticipating meeting you, your attempts to sell yourself can backfire. I learned this lesson at a speech I gave to a large dinner group. One of the audience members was such a big fan of one of my books, that he lobbied the meeting organizer to be seated right next to me. During dinner he asked me questions, and I talked and talked and talked—about me. A few days after the speech, I called the meeting organizer to follow up and offer my thanks. I thanked him for seating Daniel next to me and asked him if Daniel had had a good time. He hesitated for a moment and finally said, “I’m telling you this because I like you; but Daniel did not come away with a very good opinion of you.” It was like being punched in the gut! I responded that I thought that we had a great conversation and asked what went wrong. The meeting planner explained that Daniel felt that all I did was talk about myself. The truth hurts. I sold, but Daniel did not buy. Stop Trying to Sell Yourself, and Step Into The Other Person’s Shoes People buy you for their reasons, not for your reasons. So, when we sell people on why they should like us or buy from us, it backfires. However, when step into their shoes, truly listen, and build bridges to what is important to them, it creates a powerful connection that makes almost anything possible. Learn how to gain influence through Effective Listening Skills

The Fine Art of Blending Text Messaging Into Your Account Management Process I love blending text messaging into my account management process. As a communication tool, it’s fast, efficient, less formal than email, and allows for arm’s-length, nonintrusive, synchronous communication that still feels personal.  There are two reasons why blending text messaging into your account management process works: It’s mobile. Text messaging is integrated into the mobile and wearable devices that are attached to us 24/7. These are the primary communications devices in our lives and businesses. Everyone has a mobile phone, and for Apple users, text is integrated across all devices and desktops.   It’s treated as a priority. One of the key reasons why text messages work so well is that most people feel compelled to read and/or respond to them immediately.   Text is a Versatile For Account Management Text messaging is extremely versatile virtual communication channel. You can attach videos, images, voice messages, and links to articles and resources. And, when the person you are texting is not available, texting shifts from synchronous to asynchronous communication.  For account management and communicating with customers text messaging is a tremendous tool. It helps you nurture and maintain relationships, keeps customers updated, and allows you to quickly respond to concerns from anywhere.  It’s for these reasons that text messaging is the perfect virtual communication channel to blend into your account management system and process. Text messages are an easy way to:  Check the pulse of your accounts Show appreciation Send account updates and data. Send insight and educational resources. Keep key contacts apprised of shipments and order information. Be proactive with solving issues. Send offers and specials. The real key to blending text into your account management process is ensuring that your text messages are intentional, systematic, and part of an account management plan The Truth About Why You Really Lose Accounts A brutal truth is that most customers are lost because of neglect. Not prices, not products, not the economy, not aggressive competitors. Neglect! Neglect happens slowly. It creeps up on customer relationships.  Salespeople delude themselves into believing that if their customers are not complaining, they must be happy. So, they spend all of their time putting out fires and dealing with squeaky wheels, all the while ignoring accounts that that don’t raise their hand.  Wrapped up in this warm blanket of delusion, salespeople swing the door open and invite competitors in. Assume Every Account is At Risk Aggressive competitors don’t miss an opportunity to displace salespeople who neglect their customers. When you fail to proactively anchor your customer relationships, those competitors slip through and encourage buyers to consider other options.  This is exactly why you must never lose sight of the long-term consequences of neglecting accounts.  Relationships matter and must be protected against an onslaught of competitors. You must not take any relationship for granted. Assume that every customer and every relationship is at risk.  I’m not saying this is easy. One of the hardest things to do is keep your fingers on the pulse of your customer base.  Quarterly business reviews and other formal meeting are time consuming. You probably have a large account base and you can’t possibly meet with everyone. Every single day you are putting out fires and dealing with immediate customer service issues.  Pay Attention to Your Accounts The good news is the one secret to defending your accounts is completely in your control. Pay attention to them.   A simple, regular, inexpensive check-in by text message can make all the difference. It doesn’t need to be anything particularly special. You don’t need a reason to tell your customers that you appreciate them. How are you doing?  What can I do to help you?  I have an idea for you. I thought you might like to read this article. Here is a link to a resource that I thought you might find valuable.    Have a great weekend. Thank you for your business.  Staying in regular contact with your accounts ensures that you are top of mind with customers. It lets them know that you care.  Just remember,  it doesn’t cost a thing to pay attention to your customers.  The Dark Side of Text Messaging and Account Management Even though text messaging is a quick and convenient channel for communicating with your accounts, you must not allow text messaging to become a substitute for meeting with you customers by phone, video, and in-person.  I recently ended a several-year relationship with one of my vendors because my account manager was just “texting it in.” We’d always used text as a way to stay in touch. I appreciated being able to communicate with him and quickly get questions asked or problems solved. I’d even made several purchases after he sent me special offers in text messages.  A year earlier, though, text became his primary channel. Where we used to talk, now he never called. He was no longer blending texting into his account management process; texting had become his account management process.  If he had an upsell or special offer, he sent it via text. When it was time to restock, he sent a text. Soon, I started to feel that he was taking me for granted, like he felt he no longer needed to make an effort in order to keep my business.  This is the dark side of text messaging. It’s fast and easy, but it is not a substitute for talking with people and investing in relationships.  Sadly, for my account manager, one of his competitors called me. She invested in the relationship. I gave her a little of my business and she did a great job. As the business relationship bloomed, I gave her more and more of my business. Soon, she had it all.  And my old account manager? He has still not called. But I did get a text message from him this morning asking how I was doing. All I can do is SMH. Take a moment now and do two things: Send a text message to a customer just to say that you appreciate them. Consider how you might begin blending text messaging into your account management process. Direct messaging is a SALES MEGA-TREND. More than four billion people communicate on mobile messaging tools each day. Learn how to gain a massive competitive edge with strategies, tactics, techniques, and tips for leveraging text & direct messaging for prospecting, sales, and account management in our course: The NEW Essentials of Text & Direct Messaging

Sales Follow Up Superpowers On this Sales Gravy Podcast episode Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Jeff Shore (Follow Up and Close the Sale) discuss the two sales follow up superpowers: Speed and Personalization. The brutal truth is that salespeople have a big problem with follow up and it is holding them back. The good news, is this is a problem that is easy to fix. On this episode you’ll actionable tips and tactics that will instantly improve your sales follow up skills. BONUS: Download our FREE How to Manage Your B2B Sales Team From Home guide to get the scoop on how top sales leaders are getting more productivity from their remote sales teams.  

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast,  Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Alex Goldfayn (5 Minute Selling) discuss the massive impact of small actions, done a little bit, every day. Listen to the other episodes in the series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three Jeb – Does Faith Matter in Sales? Alex, I’ve got a question for you about faith. This is not a religious question. It’s a faith question.   You are very convincing human being. You say that sales can be done in 5 minutes a day. Talk to people, call old customers, run the system. It works.  So, I do it one day. Nothing happens. Then do it the next day and nothing happens. I do it the next day and still nothing happens. Then by the 4th day I’m like, “Alex told me to do this stuff, and I made these phone calls, but I didn’t sell anything. So, I’m going back to sending emails because that’s easier.”  How important is faith in the system, over a long period of time, to actualizing the five-minute selling process?  Alex – On Faith in Yourself Great question. Faith is a great word in sales.  Faith in the system is really about faith in yourself.   This is important because, in sales we deal with failure and overcoming failure is the key to success.  Faith is continuing to do the right things even when they’re not working as well as you would like, because they are still the right things.    In the book I have a two-week challenge: Give me 5-minutes a day for two weeks – that’s 50 minutes over 10 days. That is just five proactive outbound prospecting calls a day.   If you do that for two weeks, you will find more open opportunities and more close opportunities. It’s just two weeks of faith and here is no way that you won’t improve your sales position.   Jeb– On The Cumulative Impact of Small Actions It’s all about cumulative impact. The cumulative impact of small actions every day. Over time, these small actions add up to real numbers.   But this requires faith because you can’t prospect for a day, you can’t do follow up for a day, you can’t do anything for a day and expect everything to suddenly change. It just doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to do a little bit every day and keep doing it over time.   Now let me give you the flip side of this question. What happens when it starts working?  Salespeople have a bad habit of quitting the things that are working. Let’s just say that I give you the two weeks and then it starts working. Then suddenly my pipeline is a little bit bigger, the deals in my pipeline start to move. Suddenly people are actually spending time with me and we’re having conversations.   What happens then? I get busy and then I quit. How do I make sure that I don’t stop doing what’s working?  Alex – Staying On Track With Small Daily Actions You’re totally right. Salespeople are busy. They’re not sitting around. Therefore, the answer is you must schedule proactive, outbound sales calls into your day.   Mark Twain said, “if you’re gonna eat a frog, you might as well eat it first thing in the morning ’cause it’s not gonna taste any better later in the day.”   Firstly, do it first thing in the morning – at 8:00 or 8:30 or at 9:00. By 10:00 o’clock you want to be long done with this.   Second, what do you do if you miss a day? The next day you come back to it and you get right back on track.   It’s like if you have a bad eating day. I’ve been trying to lose some weight. Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. My wife and I went out to eat and celebrate 19-years. We had a gigantic meal, and a huge dessert. I ate like a jerk, but it was awesome – a fabulous meal.   So, my weight loss effort over? Am I done? Am I just going to give up and go back to the to the chips and the and the Donuts? nNo, I woke this morning and got back in the saddle.  The easy way to do this is to use a timer. Set it for five minutes. When the Clock is running, you’re doing your proactive work. You’re making your calls. Then when it dings, your 5 minutes are up.   Jeb – On High-Intensity Activity Sprints I love the frog eating analogy.  There’s a chapter in Fanatical Prospecting titled Eat the Frog. The point that I make in that chapter is that you should start your morning doing the hard stuff first because it’s not going to get better for you the rest of the day.   The timer method is how my mother, who is the most productive human being on Earth, runs her entire day. She carries a little timer with her and breaks everything up into 15-minute blocks.   For example, she will be in the garden weeding. She sets the timer for 15-minutes and when 15-minutes is over she moves on to the next task in her day.    Three hours of gardening feels like it’s a lot just like three hours of rejection is too much. But, 15-minutes or 5-minutes, that’s doable.   And, with just 15-minutes a day of effort, she has a pristine garden.  Jeb – On Why Cold Calling Days Don’t Work I had this client who was very serious about getting all of his salespeople in the office on Mondays for cold calling day. When I questioned him about it, he balked, “It’s very important for our company,” he said.   So, I said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll come to your office and we’ll sit together and observed cold calling day so you can show me how it works.”   At eight o’clock everyone came it, got coffee, and opened their laptops. At 8:30 a sales manager walks out onto the sales floor and says, “Everybody we need to get on the phones.” The salespeople slowly start calling. Satisfied, the sales manager goes back into her office where she resumes sending emails.  By 9:00 the salespeople are back up, walking around, getting coffee and talking to each other. The sales manager comes back out tells them to get on the phones.   This occurs several times. By 11:00, the sales manager has given up and the salespeople are roaming halls.   The senior leader I was sitting with was stunned. He truly believed that his salespeople were diligently spending 8-hours making cold calls. But this is not how humans work and it is certainly not how salespeople work.   This is why I’m all about high-intensity prospecting sprints, done a little bit, every day. It’s not about prospecting day, it’s prospecting every day.  Small actions add up.  Sequencing is the real secret to engaging hard to reach prospects. In our FREE guide Seven Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences, we show you exactly how to build a sales prospecting system that works. Download it Free Now. 

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast,  Jeb Blount’s (Virtual Selling) and Alex Goldfayn (5 Minute Selling) offer a simple strategy for overcoming your natural fear of rejection by breaking it into doable doses. Jeb On Breaking the Fear of Rejection Into Doable Doses Human beings fear rejection. We hate and avoid rejection at all costs. But, in Sales, your job is to go out and find rejection and bring it home.   However, when you break your fear of rejection into doable doses, it gets easier to handle because, over time, when you face a fear repeatedly, you gain obstacle immunity.   Alex On Using the Phone Yesterday I had a video call set up with prospect. It was at the end of a long day of video calls. You know, where everybody is a little box on the screen, right? My brain was tired of being on camera, I just wanted to walk around with my phone – just put my feet up and not be on a camera.   In some cases, I feel like there’s more dimension and depth to a phone call as compared to a video call.  If you can get good at the telephone you will put so much distance between yourself and the 95% of sales people who don’t do well on the telephone, that they will never be able to catch up with you.   That’s how important the telephone is right now.  Jeb On Blending It’s about blending. Salespeople need to get used to the word blending because, blending is how we will be selling going forward. With Virtual Selling, it is about meeting the buyer where they are. You should use the communication channel that is right for the moment.   But salespeople are not having synchronous conversations – especially by phone – because they are afraid of being rejected.   This is exactly why I think your 5 Minute Selling System is powerful. If you just do it a little bit every day – even five outbound calls per day – you reduce these fears to a small part of your day. But, as you start facing that fear, a little bit every day, it will get easier for you to handle the rejection.  And basically, what you start doing, is building a chain of days in a row where you’re investing in conversations with customers.  Think about it, 30-days of five minutes a day talking to your customers. What happens to your pipeline? Your business? Your income? What happens inside of you?   Alex On Asking More Often In baseball, if you fail 70% of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame. For salespeople, if you’re failing 80 to 90% of the time, you’re doing damn good!  So, when we try to avoid every single no, we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to get the yeses that make us successful.  The salespeople who get the most no’s, the ones who get the most rejection, are the ones who are most successful. Because, they’re the ones who are asking the most.  It’s simple. If you get the most no’s you get the most yeses.   Thomas Edison said that many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.  So, if you’ve already been rejected eight times by this prospect, the ninth rejection is literally no worse. It’s the same. There is no difference.  Jeb on High-Intensity Prospecting Sprints I’m working with a group right now and we are running high-intensity prospecting sprints. We’re doing 10-minute phone blocks. It’s a simple cadence: 10-minutes, 10 dials, with a goal to set one appointment.   It’s just so easy for people to rip off 10 dials. Leveraging this methodology allows them to get a whole lot prospecting done in a short period time with better outcomes. Because we break rejection into doable doses (10-minutes at a time) it’s easier for them to remain motivated and focused.   On Accomplishment in Small Doses And it makes you feel more confident and accomplished because you’re having positive interactions! You’re going to feel better about yourself.   You connected with someone. You feel positive and that’s a much better feeling than avoiding the phone and procrastinating.  That bit of success is going to make you want to do it again. If you get focused on talking to people 5 minutes a day you can grow your sales tremendously. But, you’re going to want to do more than that. And, you will. 

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast,  Jeb Blount’s (Virtual Selling) and Alex Goldfayn (5 Minute Selling) teach you how to eliminate cold calling by talking with people you already know. Jeb: On Why Talking to People You Know Can Eliminate Cold Calling “Welcome back to part two of my conversation with author Alex Goldfayn about 5 Minute Selling Skills. On this episode, we discuss one of the greatest sources of new pipeline opportunities.    It’s the people that you already know. Talking with the people you know is an easy way to eliminate cold calling.” Alex: On Planning Who You Will Call  “I feel like we don’t call people because we don’t know who to call, right? Unless you’re using a CRM perfectly, it’s not going to tell you who to call. It’s a list of names and numbers.   At the beginning of the week for five minutes, write down who you’re going to call that week. For example, customers that just made an order with you. Right now, try thinking of five customers you haven’t talked to in three months or more, you can’t do it because you’re not talking to them. They’re not in your head. Customers who used to buy from you but stopped are another group of people that’s very difficult to think of because they don’t call you to break up with you. They just go away. You know, they go away quietly, so we need to plan who to call.  And then we have the whole rest of the week to call a few each day. If you don’t want to call them directly send a text or email to set up that phone call. I think the only semi valuable use of email in the sales process job is to set up the phone call. Otherwise, it’s nearly useless. In business to business, selling right and email is just slightly better than doing nothing at all. Plan your calls and then write down what happens. What did you say? What did they say and then? What’s the dollar amount associated with that interaction? Because then once you fill that in, that becomes a goldmine that you can follow up on. The most successful people follow up a lot more than other people.  So, plan who to call and then track how those calls went and what was said and what the opportunity dollar value is. If you do those two things, each thing takes 5 minutes. The calls take 5 minutes. The things to say on the calls take 5 minutes.  How can you not grow if you’re making hundreds of additional proactive communications a year?” Jeb: On Eliminating Cold Calling By Talking With Inactive Customers “It really is that simple. Let’s start with customers that just aren’t doing business with you anymore. To me, this is the gold mind of all gold mines. When we’re working with clients who want to accelerate growth, engaging inactive customers is almost always where we go first. I had one client, for example, that had a half a million inactive customers in their database. We pulled the list and just picked up the phone and started calling them. We did exactly what you said Alex. All we did was call them up to say hello. In one hour, we sold $1,000,000 in business. Now most of that was to one business that was expanding rapidly. We got the owner on the phone and the he was ready to buy. He said he was just about to put out an RFP.” Alex: On the Rewards for Being Present “It was so hard for me not to jump in in the middle of that, I had to really practice my silence technique there because I got excited by what you were saying. You got that business sitting at that conference table because you were present and nobody else was. The guy even said I was just about to take his business somewhere else. But you’re here, so I’m going to reward you with business If you’re the customer, you feel an obligation to a salesperson who makes the effort to pick up the phone and be present. And, by the way, they. It wasn’t like you were cold calling. I mean, it wasn’t like there was somebody who didn’t know you. They had a relationship with your business in the past. They were familiar with your brand. There’s nothing to lose by calling them. In no place in any of my books or any of my consulting work do I say that salespeople should be cold calling. All of us should be calling people who we know. I understand, some people have to cold call, but we all know hundreds of people that we can connect with them, catch up with, and some of them, as you said, have already spent money with us. Your customers want to hear from you because they want to know you care. And the tragedy of it, is because of our fear, when we don’t call them, we hurt them, and we hurt ourselves, and we hurt our families. Because of stupid fear.” Learn exactly how to grab your prospect’s attention and engage them in conversations in our FREE E-Book called Seven Steps for Building Effective Prospecting Sequences

On this Sales Gravy podcast episode Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Alex Goldfayn (5 Minute Selling) discuss why text messaging is not a substitute for talking with people. This is Part One in our series on 5 Minute Selling – how to get a massive amount of sales activity done, a few minutes at a time. Just Texting It In On this episode Jeb tells the story of a lazy sales rep who lost his business that because he began “texting it in” rather than interacting by phone. “A year earlier, text became his primary channel. Where we used to talk, now he never called. He was no longer blending texting into his account management process; texting had become his account management process. If he had an upsell or special offer, he sent it via text. When it was time to restock, he sent a text. Soon, I started to feel that he was taking me for granted, like he felt he no longer needed to make an effort in order to keep my business. Sadly, for this account manager, one of his competitors called me. She invested in the relationship. I gave her a little of my business and she did a great job. As the business relationship bloomed, I gave her more and more of my business. Soon she had it all.” Text Messaging is Not a Substitute for Talking With People This is the dark side of text messaging. It’s fast and easy, but it is not a substitute for talking with people and investing in relationships. Interpersonal communication is a combination of words, voice tone, body language, and facial expression. Since stakeholders cannot associate the words in your text messages with the context of your voice tone and facial expressions, they assign their own meaning, which can lead to miscommunication, or, in Jeb’s case, resentment. Virtual Selling Skills Training gives your sales team the tactics, tools, techniques, and strategies to remain relevant and competitive in the ever-changing environment of modern sales.  

On this Sales Gravy Podcast episode Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Anthony Iannarino (Eat Their Lunch) get down and dirty about why salespeople need to adopt a phone first approach to outbound prospecting sequences. Three Reasons Salespeople Default to Email for Outbound Prospecting There is no tool in your sales arsenal that is more powerful than the phone. None. Yet sales professionals across the spectrum have abandoned the phone for spamming prospects with an endless stream of email. Fear of the Phone In many cases this destructive behavior has its origin in fear. These salespeople are afraid of rejection and therefore avoid talking to people. Email allows them to keep people at arms length. Ignorance of the Power of the Phone in Outbound Prospecting In other circumstances, it is a case of ignorance. Salespeople have been blasted with the false message that the “phone no longer works.” They’ve been lead to believe that the only way to effectively prospect is by email. Therefore, they stuff outbound prospecting sequences with spammy emails rather than leading with the phone first. Leadership Failures Finally, there is the failure of leadership. From sales managers to marketing organizations, salespeople are not being taught how to do outbound prospecting by phone or held accountable for talking to people. Leaders, through their actions and inaction, encourage email first vs phone first outbound prospecting sequences. This results in thin pipelines and, in many cases, a negative impact to the company’s brand. Phone First Outbound Prospecting Sequences The objective of outbound prospecting sequences is to improve the probability of engaging a prospect. For this reason, sequences deploy multiple communication channels and prospecting touches over set duration of time. The key to effective outbound prospecting is talking to people. So, for best results, front load your outbound prospecting sequences with phone touches. The phone is the easiest and fastest means of engaging in conversations with and setting appointments with high quality prospects. Therefore, to fill your pipeline faster, in less time, lead with a phone first approach on outbound prospecting sequences. We created a new FREE guide to help you build better prospecting sequences called Seven Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences

Mastering the “Yes – And” Sales Improv Framework Ever been caught flatfooted when a buyer throws an unexpected objection at you? It turns out that improv can help you handle it and increase sales. On this Sales Gravy Podcast episode, Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Gina Trimarco engage in a fun discussion on how to increase sales with improv. You’ll learn how developing the same skills comedians and actors use on stage, can help you in front of buyers during sales conversations. Improv is the art of off-the-cuff, un-scripted comedy in which the actors respond to cues from each other rather than reading from a set script. The most important keys to effective improv are listening, accepting, and leveraging the “yes-and” framework. Sales improv helps you increase sales by: Becoming more confident Being present and in the moment Building sales conversation organically Asking better questions Being a better listener Keeping buyers engaged Detaching from outcomes During the podcast, Jeb and Gina demonstrate the “Yes-And” improv framework and Jeb fails miserably. The good news is the “yes-and” improv motion is easy to learn with practice. Mastering this framework is the key to increasing sales with improv. Gina also shares her inspiring entrepreneurial story about how she built her sales improv training business. Gina combines street smarts and improv comedy skills with her experience in the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds to teach sales professionals improv techniques.