Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

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.

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.

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 p...

Authors Jeb Blount and Alex Goldfayn share insights on eliminating cold calling by connecting with people you already know. They discuss the importance of planning who to call each week, focusing on recent, past, and inactive customers for successful sales. The podcast emphasizes building sales success through personal connections rather than cold outreach.

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.

Starting a B2B Podcast is a Smart Virtual Selling Strategy On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and James Carbary (Content-Based Networking) discuss how starting a B2B podcast can elevate your personal brand and build familiarity. Familiarity Leads to Liking In Sales, familiarity is powerful because familiarity leads to liking. When people are familiar with you, the more likely they'll be to engage on prospecting calls and feel comfortable with you on virtual sales calls. Familiarity is virtual selling lubrication. It takes the friction out of virtual communication and makes everything easier. The lack of familiarity is why you get so many objections. When people don’t know you, it’s much harder for them to trust you. To build familiarity, you must make a direct investment in improving the awareness of your name, expertise, and reputation. Listening to a podcast is such an investment and, one that will pay huge dividends. The Virtual Selling Book Virtual Selling is hot. Smoking hot! Because, to remain relevant and competitive sales professionals must learn how to engage prospects and close deals in a virtual environment. This is exactly why you need my new book Virtual Selling. In Virtual Selling I teach you exactly how to gain a powerful competitive edge and crush your competitors by leveraging virtual communication channels. Don’t walk, don’t wait, don’t hesitate. Go get Virtual Selling now. It is a run-away best seller for one simple reason. The techniques, tactics, and skills I teach you in Virtual Selling work.

Open yourself up to new opportunities It's difficult to see new possibilities during this crisis. It seems like we've been in this pandemic for years rather than months. Secretly, most of us have been living with the hope that the coronavirus pandemic would be over quickly and that we'd get back to normal. With the new surge in cases, what is becoming clear is that everything has changed, that there is no going back, and that the only thing we can count on is new possibilities. In Coronavirus Talk #8, I discuss why it is important that you shift your mindset now so that you are looking though the windshield rather than in the rear view mirror. Adapting to A New Reality The last time I came to you with a Coronavirus talk, it was way back in April. We were talking about gratitude. And a lot's happened since April. One of the things that happened to me was that I wrote an entire book, an 85,000 word book on Virtual Selling. And it's something that normally takes me 18 to 24 months. And I was able to focus my attention and get it done. This is one of the lessons that I've learned during coronavirus. There are all these new possibilities, different things that we can do. And I've heard a lot of people, very smart people, talk about how, even though it seems a little bleak right now, this coronavirus pandemic is going to launch an entire new wave of innovation and it's making a lot of us think differently. I think I told you in a previous talk that I was rethinking in fact, a lot of my values, and it's helped me, as a CEO, begin to transform my company, Sales Gravy, into a different company, and to grow faster. The reason that I'm back, because I really wasn't planning on any more coronavirus talks, is because the coronavirus is back with a fury. We're seeing cases popping up everywhere. Now we're shutting things down again. There's a little bit of panic. I think we're looking at some stiff economic headwinds if we don't get this under control. Everything Has Changed, Especially in Sales And a lot of folks who were thinking that we were going to get back to normal are now faced with the truth, that there is not going to be a "back to normal." Everything has changed and it will continue to change. And it's no different than what happened to us after 9/11. After 9/11, we were expecting things to go back to normal and they never really did. We've traveled again and we continued on with our lives, but security never changed in airports. And the way that we looked at the world, it was always jaded after that moment. Now, I'm not saying that the coronavirus caused us to look at the world with a jaded view. I think it's going to, like I said, open up new possibilities. And I think for all of the folks who were holding on to the hope that we will go back to normal, I think right now you're getting a massive wake up call, in particular with salespeople. Differentiate with Virtual Selling Because if you're in sales, you know that everything has changed and it is not going back. If you want to be relevant, if you want to be competitive, if you want to differentiate, you have to learn how to sell differently, which means you have to adopt new tools, which means you have to become good at virtual selling, and you have to do it now. That is a fact. Look, I'll admit that I was like a lot of folks. I believed that this would be over quickly. I wrote a book called Virtual Selling, expecting that it would have a short life cycle that it wouldn't live very long because people would get back to what we were doing before and back to normal. And now you can see, as the cases have picked up and as we are really coming to grips with the fact that we're in this for the long haul, that the truth is, is virtual selling is the way that we're going to move forward. Rise to the Occasion But here's the good news-- and we're getting this in from everywhere across industries, the size of companies, in different countries,