Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

• The Sales Mindset Lessons from an American Ninja Warrior

  Every salesperson knows that feeling, the one right before the big meeting when confidence wavers and doubt creeps in. Alex Weber knows it, too. He’s one of the few people to go from hosting American Ninja Warrior to competing on the show. When I asked him what separates winners from everyone else on an episode of The Sales Gravy Podcast, he said: “Winners believe they're going to win. You’re not going to win every deal. But even as I say that, I’m never going to let myself actually believe that.” This is a masterclass in sales mindset—the mental toughness every top salesperson needs. The difference between a competitor who freezes and one who performs is simple: The winner chooses belief over hesitation, every single time.  Stop Managing Doubt, Start Dictating Belief The average salesperson walks into a deal trying to manage their doubt. They worry about the competition, they worry about the price, and they worry about rejection. That hesitation bleeds through every presentation, email, and follow-up. The average rep tells themselves, "I hope I get this deal." Winners decide before the phone rings that they are the best solution, they deserve the business, and they are going to win. That mindset is the foundation of high-performance selling. The moment you let the "what if I lose?" question become dominant, you pull back. You ask soft closing questions. You accept the first objection. Top salespeople know that a soft sales mindset guarantees a hard loss. You must carry the confidence of a winner, even when the odds are stacked against you. Failure is Feedback: Burn the Ship and Move On In high-stakes competitive environments, you can’t dwell on failure. If a Ninja Warrior misses a jump, they can't afford to spend five minutes replaying the error in their head; they are already in the water. In sales, the deep end is rejection. Too many salespeople treat a "no" like a personal failure instead of professional feedback. They let one bad call destroy their attitude for the entire week. This is why their sales mindset is fragile. Winners understand that every loss is simply data to be analyzed. What did the client object to? Where did you lose control? What did the competitor do better? Process it immediately, then move on. When you fail, you need to "burn the ship." You acknowledge the loss, extract the lesson, and sever the emotional attachment. The inability to recover fast is the #1 killer of a sales mindset. You are guaranteeing an underperforming pipeline if you can't reset your mental state between calls. Commit to the next interaction, not the last one. Build Your Muscle Memory for Pressure You can't expect to be calm and collected during a high-pressure, high-dollar negotiation if you haven't trained for it. Elite competitors don't rely on game-day adrenaline. They rely on muscle memory built through intentional practice under pressure. Practice is how you develop the sales mindset that never wavers. Identify the parts of the sales cycle that make you uncomfortable. If handling tough objections is your weakness, practice them relentlessly until your response is automatic. If you freeze up when cold calling top-tier decision-makers, role-play the opening three minutes of that call until you can deliver it with confidence. Your pipeline grows on competence, not hope.  Stop Waiting for Motivation: Execute on Discipline The worst lie in sales is the idea that you have to feel motivated to prospect. Motivation is an emotion. It comes and goes. Discipline is a decision. The champion's sales mindset relies on routine and process. You don't need to feel excited to make that fifth cold call or send that critical follow-up. You just need to execute your process. If you let your feelings dictate your schedule, you will only prospect when the conditions are perfect. That is an amateur move. Winners know the work is non-negotiable. Discipline is showing up every day, executing the critical,

  --------  

  28:09

  --------

  28:09
• What to Do When You Lose Your Sales Motivation After Success (Ask Jeb)

  Here's a question that'll mess with your head: What do you do when you're making seven figures in sales, crushing every goal, and suddenly … you just don't feel the same motivation anymore? That's the question Matthew Feit from Toms River, New Jersey, posed on an Ask Jeb episode. Matthew's living the dream that most salespeople chase their entire careers. He's at the top of his game financially. He's proven everything he set out to prove. And now he's stuck in this weird limbo where the fire that got him there has gone cold. If you're shaking your head right now, thinking this is a champagne problem, you're missing the point. This is one of the most dangerous positions a high achiever can find themselves in, and it's costing top performers their edge every single day. The Jim Story: When Achievement Becomes Your Enemy Let me tell you about Jim. Years ago, when I was living in Florida, I had this sales rep who was an absolute monster. Top of the ranking report. Presidents Club. Rolex on his wrist for winning. Then one day, his director of sales wanted to put him on a performance improvement plan. In sales, a PIP means you are a dead man walking. I drove up to Jacksonville thinking there had to be some mistake. When I sat down with Jim, I realized the problem wasn't his ability. The guy was still incredibly talented. The problem was he'd won everything there was to win, and he just didn't have the next goal driving him anymore. Here's what I learned: The things we do in sales are hard. They're repetitive. We deal with difficult people. It takes massive discipline, which is simply sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. But when you don't know what you want most anymore, that discipline evaporates. Jim's answer surprised me. He wanted a Harley-Davidson, but his wife wouldn't let him buy it. So I worked out a way to structure his commissions so he could get his Harley while still bringing home the money his wife expected. Suddenly, his sales went through the roof again. He had something driving him. The Cognitive Dissonance of High Achievement Here's what's happening with guys like Matthew and what happened with Jim: They've got this level of cognitive dissonance. Part of them is a stone-cold high achiever who needs to be achieving. The other part is saying, "I don't feel it anymore. I don't have that juice." When you're younger or earlier in your career, you're sketching out goals constantly. I remember having a goal book where I wrote down everything I wanted. One of my goals was a house on the inter-coastal waterway in South Florida. I achieved that goal. Then one day I'm sitting there going, "Well, what do I do now?" It's easy to get comfortable when you don't know where to go next. But comfortable is the enemy of excellence in high-performance sales cultures. What Do You Really Want? I hit the same wall this year. Twenty years building this business, book number 17 coming out, and I'm asking myself the same question Matthew asked: "What now?" I finally figured it out. My wants aren't things anymore. Maybe in my 20s and 30s it was about what I was going to own, but today it's different. It's about what I want to accomplish and who I want to work with. I realized I want to work with people and companies I know I can help. That are a challenge for me. Where I can watch them grow and enjoy seeing them succeed. Who really want to work with me and see me as part of their organization, not as a vendor. As a result, I've been rearranging my world so I can be very picky about what I'm going to do, who I'm going to work with, and who I'm going to speak to. I want to do things that give me joy and fulfill my purpose, which is to help people sell more. That's why I believe God put me here. The Twenty Year Vision When I was a little older than Matthew, I looked at my life and asked: "What are the next 20 years going to be like?" I had won every award you could win in sales.

  --------  

  17:44

  --------

  17:44
• Why Your Rivals Pray You Cut Training—And Why You Shouldn’t (Money Monday)

  This time of year is critical. As sales leaders map out their budgets for the new year, the conversation always centers on a core conflict: How to cut expenses and, simultaneously, motivate teams to hit larger quotas. What's the first line item to feel the squeeze? Training and development. It is often incorrectly labeled a 'want' and not a 'need.' We hear leaders say, "It can wait until next quarter," or, "Once we stabilize revenue, we'll invest in the team."  This short-sighted thinking doesn’t save money. Instead, it's costing organizations a significant, quantifiable amount of revenue and talent. When professional development is treated like a luxury, we undermine the foundational ability of our teams to perform consistently at a high level. Training is the Foundational Requirement for Peak Performance Sales leaders should consider peak performance in any high-stakes environment. In the military, or in elite professional sports, ongoing training is not a choice—it is a non-negotiable, daily priority.  So why is it that, in Sales, we view continuous development as optional or too expensive? The simple truth is that lack of training is the most expensive mistake you can make. Think about the rate of technological change. Most of us have upgraded our cell phones in the last three to five years because the old ones simply couldn't keep up.  The same principle applies to your sales team’s skill set. If your representatives are still relying on techniques learned 5, 10, or 15 years ago, then they are operating at a competitive disadvantage. They will be outmaneuvered and outperformed by competitors who are strategically investing in modern sales frameworks every time. Henry Ford’s famous quote still holds true: "The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is to not train them and keep them." If you believe training is expensive, you must take a moment to calculate the monumental loss of reps consistently missing their quotas. The True Cost of Inconsistency and Turnover Look at the numbers. Assume three of your representatives are consistently missing quota by just 20%. That deficit is lost revenue—but it also represents wasted leads, missed opportunities, and the corrosive ripple effect of deals that never even make it into your pipeline. The amount of potential revenue lost due to underperformance is often far greater than the entire annual budget you would allocate to comprehensive sales training. Action Plan for Sales Leaders & Managers To reverse this loss, you must treat coaching as a continuous operational requirement, not a perk. Calculate the 'Cost of Inaction' to Justify Budget: Reframe thinking of training as an expense and start focusing on the cost of the status quo. Calculate the annualized revenue loss from your bottom 20% of underperforming reps (e.g., missed quota * average deal size). Use that concrete number to justify and secure a budget for development, proving that not training is your biggest liability. Implement a Continuous Coaching Framework: Don't rely on annual training events. Transform your managers into daily coaches by mandating 30 minutes of structured, one-on-one coaching per week focused on skill development. This reinforcement is what locks in new behaviors and prevents the initial energy gained in training from fading. The Hidden Expense of Disengagement Talent turnover is another critical cost of lack of training that is often overlooked. A representative who feels unsupported, or who consistently misses quota because they don’t have the necessary tools and coaching, is highly likely to seek opportunities elsewhere.  The cost of recruiting, onboarding, and ramping a replacement—which includes the loss of established customer relationships and the disruption to team morale—significantly outweighs the expense of proactive investment. How to Take a Struggling Rep From Liability to Asset

  --------  

  8:02

  --------

  8:02
• 16 Sales Horror Stories That Prove You’re Not Alone

  Every sales professional has a horror story that still makes them break out in a cold sweat years later. The deal that imploded spectacularly. The customer interaction that went sideways in ways you couldn't predict. The moment you sat in your car afterward in complete silence, questioning every decision that led you to this career. These moments feel intensely personal and isolating. But the truth is, every rep who’s lasted in this profession has been there. On an episode of The Sales Gravy Podcast, Ashley Blount and I collected nightmare sales stories from our years in the automotive and telecommunications industries, plus stories from the sales community. We found 16 tales that prove no one faces this alone. Here are some of the most terrifying. Smelly Dave: The Angel of Death This sales horror story comes from the automotive industry, posted on Reddit by someone who still sounds traumatized. Dave started at the dealership after Sears closed. We found out he’d been the “Angel of Death” at several franchises—Sears, Future Shop, RadioShack. Every place he touched eventually shut down. Dave was in his early 40s, wore the same shirt with the same coffee stain on it every single day, and smelled terribly. Customers would flee after test drives, refusing to come back into the building with him. On one occasion, a customer was dry heaving. Management tried to delicately bring up the hygiene issue, but Dave wouldn’t listen. One day, the manager was told to drop off a sold vehicle to a customer, and Dave drove the chase car. As they returned together, the smell in that enclosed space was so unbearable that the manager walked into the boss's office afterward and apologized for whatever he had done to deserve that punishment. The boss laughed, called Dave in, and fired him on the spot. The Bluetooth Incident That Still Haunts Ashley Ashley had been selling cars for a few months when a sweet older couple came into the dealership. The husband was retiring, probably late 60s, and they were one of those rare couples who were actually pleasant to work with. He picked out a lime green Ford Fiesta for his retirement car. They completed the test drive, finished all the paperwork, and Ashley sent the vehicle back to get ready for delivery. When delivering a new vehicle, you always get in with the customer to help them connect their phone to Bluetooth and walk them through all the features. Since it was a couple, the husband was in the driver's seat, his wife was in the front passenger seat, and Ashley was sitting in the middle of the back seat. They got his phone connected to the Bluetooth, matched the code, and turned up the volume on the car. He went to open his phone. The most explicit, obscene audio you can imagine came blasting out of the speakers. Dead silence in that vehicle for what felt like forever. Ashley wished them well, exited the car, and walked back inside, mortified. When asked how it went, she told them the story and muttered, “I don’t really want to follow up. I’m not sure that’s appropriate.” The Telecom Contractors Who Started a Gunfight I had door-knocked a large hair salon and built a relationship with the salon owner, who also owned the building. He helped me get in the door with all four of his tenants. Because he was switching, they all switched. I closed three to four months of quota on this one deal because of what he did for me.  Installation day arrives. At 6 a.m., my phone rings. I try to sound as awake as possible with my gravelly morning voice, and the owner immediately screams, "Jeb, what the f**k?" He explains that our contractors came out the night before, got in a huge argument, waved guns at each other—he swears one of them shot at the other. Then they came back in the morning and dug a trench that cut every single internet line to the building. Every single one. No internet on the salon’s busiest day, and all the other stores were out, too. I arrived at 6:45 a.m.

  --------  

  47:20

  --------

  47:20
• How to Build an Enterprise Sales Strategy for Startups (Ask Jeb)

  Here's a problem that'll tie you in knots: You've got a killer software solution that saves companies massive amounts of money on employee benefits. You know exactly who needs it: Fortune 1000 companies with self-insured health plans. But you can't get a single meeting with the people who matter. That's the situation Peter Kleinman from Provo, Utah, finds himself in. As the sales and marketing guy for his dad's startup, he's tasked with landing enterprise clients while juggling full-time classes at BYU. He has LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and a burning desire to make it work. He also has virtually no chance of success using his current approach. If you're nodding your head right now, keep reading. Because Peter's problem is your problem if you're trying to sell into enterprise accounts without the business acumen, social proof, or strategy to break through. The 100-Foot Wall Problem Here's the biggest issue: Fortune 1000 CHROs and C-suite executives have built a wall around themselves that's about 100 feet high. Their entire job is keeping people like you from wasting their time. And if you're young, inexperienced, or new to enterprise sales? That wall might as well be 1,000 feet high. Peter is doing everything the sales books tell you to do. He's going straight to the top. He's messaging decision makers on LinkedIn. He's targeting the right titles. He's also getting absolutely nowhere. Here's why: It has nothing to do with age and everything to do with business acumen. You can't speak the language of enterprise buyers if you've never lived in their world. You don't understand their buying process, their risk aversion, or the organizational politics that determine whether your deal lives or dies. Most critically, you're trying to sell something they don't even know they need. And you have zero social proof to back up your claims. That's not a recipe for success. That's a recipe for frustration, burnout, and a pipeline full of nothing. The Bottom-Up, Top-Down Strategy If you can't get to the top, start at the bottom. I'm not talking about giving up on enterprise accounts. I'm talking about running a multi-threading strategy that builds your business acumen while creating pathways into those massive organizations. Here's how it works: Find the amplifiers. These are the people in the trenches who actually deal with the problem your solution solves every single day. They're not directors or VPs. They're managers, analysts, and coordinators who feel the pain but lack the authority to fix it. These people are 100 times easier to talk to than C-suite executives. They'll take your call. They'll teach you. They'll tell you exactly what's broken in their organization and how decisions actually get made. Compress your experience. When you talk to these amplifiers, you're not selling. You're learning. You're asking questions like, "Help me understand how you make these decisions," and "What problems are you running into?" Every conversation compresses years of experience into hours. You learn the language. You understand the pain points. You gather insights that become ammunition for conversations with decision-makers. Surface the insights upward. Now when you finally get in front of that CHRO or VP of Benefits, you're not some kid with a PowerPoint. You're someone who understands their organization better than they do. You can tell them stories about what their own people are experiencing and how you can close the gap. That's how you get meetings. That's how you build credibility. That's how you win deals when you have no business acumen and no social proof. The Insurance Broker Shortcut Here's another path Peter needs to explore: Insurance brokers. If you can't talk to the self-insured companies directly, talk to the people who advise them. Insurance brokers work with these organizations every day. They understand the buying process. They know the pain points. They're infinitely more accessible than Fortun...

  --------  

  20:46

  --------

  20:46

More Business podcasts

Trending Business podcasts

About Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount