Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

• Using Authentic Appreciation to Drive Sales Team Success

  The automated "Great job, team!" email blasted to 47 people at 4:37 PM on a Friday isn’t authentic appreciation. Neither is the generic gift basket ordered by someone in HR who’s never met your top performer, or the corporate recognition program where nobody actually feels valued. These things look like recognition, but your people know the truth: leadership is outsourcing one of the most human tasks—seeing the people who show up every day and make things happen. And your teams feel the disconnect. As Jeb Blount Jr. recently said on the Sales Gravy Podcast: "Don't make your appreciation to customers, to your team, to yourself a completely outsourced behavior. It will be cheap, and everyone will know it." Authentic appreciation can’t be delegated to your human resources team or automated through your CRM. And that's exactly why it works. Where Sales Leaders Go Wrong with Recognition Most sales leaders fall into one of two camps. Camp one believes they don't have time for appreciation because they're focused on results. The numbers are what matter. Recognition is soft skills territory—nice to have, but not essential. Camp two wants to show appreciation but defaults to the path of least resistance. They sign the company card. Approve the budget for the year-end gift. Forward the congratulatory email from the VP. Box checked. Both camps are missing what actually moves people. Recognition that matters requires you to see the work that often goes unseen. It demands that you pause long enough to notice not just the outcome, but the effort behind it. That's not something you can outsource. Why Small Moments Compound Into Big Results There’s a concept in professional development about making 1% improvements every single day. Over 365 days, those tiny adjustments compound into exponential growth. Authentic appreciation works the same way. You don’t need a massive recognition program. You don’t need elaborate gestures or expensive rewards. You need consistency in the small moments that tell your team: I see you, and what you are doing matters. Consider the sales rep who stays late to prep for tomorrow’s presentation. The account manager who defuses a client issue before it reaches your desk. The teammate who mentors the new hire without being asked. These moments happen every day, and most leaders miss them entirely because they’re scanning for the big wins. But your team isn’t just looking for recognition when they close the monster deal. They’re looking for it on Tuesday afternoon when they’re grinding through their 50th prospecting call. They’re looking for it when they’ve had a brutal week and still show up ready to perform. Small acts of authentic appreciation in these moments build trust faster than any annual award ceremony ever will. 3 Elements of Authentic Appreciation Authentic appreciation has three non-negotiable elements. Specific means recognizing exactly what someone did and why it mattered. Not "great work on that account," but "the way you handled that objection about pricing showed real creativity—you reframed value instead of dropping price, and that's exactly the approach we need more of." Timely means you don’t wait for the quarterly review or the annual celebration. You recognize the effort when it happens, while it’s still fresh and meaningful. Personal means you deliver it in a way that resonates with that individual. Some people want public recognition. Others prefer a quiet conversation. Some treasure a handwritten note. Others just want to hear it directly from you in the moment. Here’s what this looks like in real leadership: One sales leader makes it a practice to handwrite notes to team members. Not emails. Not Slack messages. Actual pen-on-paper notes. Some are two sentences. Some are three paragraphs. But everyone is specific to something that person did and why it mattered to the team. Is it efficient? No. Does it scale? Not really. But those notes end up on office walls, in desk drawers, and tucked into planners. Years later, people still have them. That’s the difference between authentic and outsourced. Integrate Authentic Appreciation Into How You Already Work Most sales leaders know they should show more appreciation. They feel guilty about it. They add it to their to-do list. And then the day gets away from them. The problem is treating appreciation as an extra task instead of integrating it into what you’re already doing. You’re already having one-on-ones. Reviewing deals. Walking the floor or jumping on calls. The question isn’t whether you have time—it’s whether you’re paying attention in those moments. When reviewing pipeline, don’t just look at the numbers. Notice the effort. "I see you’ve been hitting activity goals consistently for six weeks straight. That discipline is setting you up for a strong Q1." When someone sends an update email, reply with more than “thanks.” Take 30 seconds to acknowledge what they did: "This breakdown made my job easier. I didn’t have to dig for answers. That kind of communication makes our team more efficient." These aren’t grand gestures. They’re small moments of paying attention and responding like a human being who notices when people do good work. Building a Culture Where Authentic Appreciation Flows Both Ways The best team cultures don’t just flow from leader to team member; they flow in every direction. When you model authentic appreciation, your team starts doing it for each other. They notice the work that happens behind the scenes. They start going the extra mile. The culture shifts from everyone waiting for the leader’s approval to everyone building each other up. One practice that works: create space in team meetings for peer recognition. Not forced or formal—just an open moment where anyone can call out something they appreciated from a teammate that week. Keep it optional. Keep it genuine. You’ll be surprised how quickly it becomes part of your team’s rhythm. Additionally, most high performers are terrible at acknowledging their own progress. They hit a goal and immediately move to the next one without pausing to appreciate what they just accomplished. In coaching sessions, start by asking: “What’s a win from this week?” Make them say it out loud. Make them acknowledge their own growth. That internal recognition builds resilience and momentum that external praise alone can’t create. What Happens When You Get This Right When you stop outsourcing appreciation and start building it into your leadership, everything shifts. Retention improves. People stay where they feel seen and valued. They leave when they feel invisible. Team energy changes. Appreciated people bring more to the table. They take ownership. They go the extra mile because they want to. Difficult conversations get easier. When someone knows you genuinely care about their success, they’re more open to feedback and coaching. Culture becomes magnetic. Top performers want to work on teams where their contributions matter. They can feel the difference between authentic and transactional leadership from a mile away. Take Action This Week Stop waiting for the perfect appreciation program or the right company initiative. Start with what you can control right now. This week: Write one handwritten note to someone on your team. Be specific about what they did and why it mattered. In your next one-on-one, ask “What’s a win from this week?” and let them acknowledge their own progress. Catch someone doing something right—however small—and tell them in the moment. End your next team meeting with clear recognition for one person. Not generic praise, tell them exactly what you noticed and why it mattered. This month: Create a recognition moment in every team meeting. Make it specific, not generic. Ask yourself: What recognition do I wish I were receiving? Then give that to someone else. When reviewing pipeline or performance, comment on the effort, not just the outcome. Stop Outsourcing What Should Be Human The work you do as a sales leader matters. The people on your team matter. And the small moments where you choose to show up and recognize their effort—those matter most of all. Your team isn’t waiting for the next corporate initiative or the annual awards ceremony. They’re waiting for you to notice. They’re waiting for you to care enough to say something about the work they’re doing right now. Stop outsourcing what should be human. Lead with authentic appreciation today, and watch your team thrive.  Want to turn recognition into motivation that sticks? Our Sales Gravy University course, 4 Keys to Keeping Your Sales Team Motivated When Everything Hits the Fan, gives you the proven framework to transform appreciation into performance. Learn how to build a sales culture where people feel seen, valued, and driven — even in hard times.

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• How Much Research Should You Do Before a Cold Call (Ask Jeb)

  Here's a question that'll expose one of the most common productivity killers in sales: How much research should you do before making a cold call? That's the challenge Michael Bricker from West Monroe, Louisiana brought to a recent Ask Jeb episode. Five months into his role at Cantara Networks, a fiber-backed internet provider, Michael was supposed to spend three minutes researching each prospect. Instead, he found himself spending 15 to 30 minutes per call, terrified he'd miss the one critical insight that would unlock the door. Sound familiar? If you're nodding right now, you're not alone. This "research paralysis" is one of the most insidious productivity traps in modern sales, and it's killing your pipeline velocity. The Big Lie Your Brain Tells You Let's get one thing straight: Research is not prospecting. Research is research. Every minute you spend digging through a prospect's LinkedIn profile, reading their latest press release, or analyzing their org chart is a minute you're not actually doing any prospecting activity. You're not talking to anyone. You're not having conversations. You're not moving deals forward. But here's where it gets dangerous. When you add in the basic human fear that comes with making cold calls, research becomes an emotional crutch. Your brain lies to you and whispers, "If I just know all this information, it'll be so much better." So you spend 15 minutes researching, make the call, and it goes to voicemail. You make 12 calls a day. Everyone goes to voicemail. All that research, and you didn't get anywhere. How Much Do You Actually Need to Know? Michael had a breakthrough realization that changed everything: "I'm not looking to make a sale on that initial cold call. I'm looking to make a connection." That's the insight that separates efficient prospectors from research addicts. On your first cold call, you're not selling them anything. You're trying to set an appointment so you can ask questions and figure out whether it makes sense to keep talking. That's it. So how much do you really need to know to set that appointment? The answer is not a lot. Think about it this way: The more you get to know your customers, your business, and your industry, the more business acumen you gain. Over time, you'll talk to ten businesses just like the one you're about to call. You'll recognize patterns. You'll see that companies in a certain sector or geographic area all face the same three challenges. You don't need 15 minutes of research to recognize those patterns. You just need to build a message around them. When Research Actually Matters Now, before you throw all research out the window, let me be clear about when it does matter. If you're sending a prospecting email, do some research. You're putting something in writing, so you better have some insight that's not AI-generated garbage. If you make a call, get a hard no from the CEO, and want to try again with a different message, do the research before you call back. You've hit a wall. Now you need ammunition. If you've had a first meeting and you're going into discovery, absolutely do deep research. You're walking in armed because you know they'll be there waiting. All that effort will pay off. But for that first cold call? Stop overthinking it. The Batching Solution If you feel like you absolutely need to do research (and I get it, some people do), here's the fix: Schedule time before your call block for research. Do all your three-minute lookups in one batch. Write your notes next to each name. Then go make the calls. Why does this work? Because you're going to hit voicemail a lot anyway. But at least you'll have the research done and maintain your call momentum. Let's say you run a call block on 25 cold leads. You talk to five people. Those five give you information like "I'm not the right person" or "We don't have that problem." Now you know something. Now go back and do deeper research on those five so you can come back with a better message. That's efficiency. That's strategy. That's how you maximize your prospecting time. The Power of Targeted Messaging Here's what really unlocks productivity: Creating targeted messages for roles or industries instead of personalizing every single call. If you're calling 25 CIOs in the healthcare sector, you and I could sit down and quickly identify what they're dealing with. What issues are they facing? What do they want from their business? How could you help them? We could build one or two messages that'll connect with most people on that list without researching every single prospect. Then you make 25 calls in an hour instead of researching five people and making five cold calls in three hours. Which approach do you think sets more appointments? Every Meeting Has One Job Michael asked about moving deals forward after discovery, and here's the framework that keeps everything simple: The entire purpose of a prospecting cold call is to get the first meeting. The entire purpose of the first meeting is to get the next meeting. Everything else is academic. Each step in your sales process exists to advance to the next step with a committed micro-commitment. When deals stall, it's almost always because you didn't nail down that next step or you didn't test stakeholder engagement. If a prospect says "I'll get you that information next week" and next week comes and goes, what are they telling you? They're not that into this. It's not a priority. Keep deals moving by driving momentum through committed next steps. The Bottom Line Stop letting research become a productivity trap. The goal isn't to know everything before you make a call. The goal is to have enough conversations to fill your pipeline while making each one count. Be confident in your ability to get someone on the phone and convert them into an appointment. If you hit a wall and get valuable information, then go back and research for your next attempt. But if you're researching every prospect before every cold call, you're lying to yourself about productivity. You're avoiding the hard work of actually prospecting. Batch your research. Build targeted messages. Focus on conversations that convert. That's how you build a pipeline that actually moves. Want to transform your approach to prospecting and turn LinkedIn into your ultimate lead generation machine? Check out The LinkedIn Edge and learn how to leverage the world's most powerful B2B platform to fill your pipeline with qualified opportunities.

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• The Gratitude Advantage: Why an Attitude of Gratitude Is a Sales Superpower (Money Monday)

  This is a very special Monday because it's Thanksgiving week here in the United States. This is the week we pause to express gratitude for the people in our lives, for what we've been given, and for what we've accomplished. But gratitude isn't just a feel-good emotion reserved for the holidays. It's also a performance- and life-enhancing routine that can give you sales superpowers. Gratitude Builds a Strong Mindset Sales is a mental game. Your mindset, attitude, and beliefs have more impact on your sales outcomes and ultimate success than any technique, script, or strategy ever will. This isn't soft psychology. This is neuroscience. Gratitude activates the parts of your brain associated with reward and emotional regulation. It releases dopamine and serotonin, neurotransmitters that make you feel good, leading to increased happiness and decreased anxiety and stress. Your confidence rises, your mind clears, you gain emotional control, and you make wiser decisions. Gratitude fundamentally rewires how your brain processes the world around you. When you practice gratitude consistently, your brain shifts from focusing on what could go wrong and starts seeing what could go right. Gratitude and insidious self-pity cannot coexist. Instead of dwelling on the deal you lost, the prospect that rejected you, or the leads you don’t have, you appreciate the lessons you’ve learned and the opportunities still in front of you. But it goes deeper than just feeling better. Gratitude Builds Resilience In sales, you face rejection constantly. Bad weeks, tough months, prospects who ghost you after months of work, and deals that fall apart at the last minute, even though you did everything right. In this brutal profession, the salespeople who survive and thrive are the ones who bounce back faster from these inevitable setbacks. One of the key traits of highly successful people is an enduring belief that everything happens for a reason. When you can find something to appreciate even in difficult situations, you maintain your emotional stability. You don't spiral into negativity. You don't let one bad call ruin your entire day. Instead, you process the setback, learn from it, and move forward. Abundance vs Scarcity Thinking When you focus on what you do have—your skills, your relationships, your opportunities, your resources—you shift from scarcity thinking to abundance thinking. Scarcity thinking is the mother of negativity. It says: "I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough support. I'm going to miss my number." Abundance thinking is a mindset of opportunity and potential. It says: "Look at the skills I've developed. Look at the customers who trust me. Look at the opportunities in my pipeline. Look at what's possible." When you operate from gratitude and abundance, you become more creative, more energetic, more persistent. You stop fixating on limitations and start exploring possibilities. You show up differently. You bring positive energy. And people feel it. They want to work with people who are confident, positive, and focused on what's possible rather than what's impossible. Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude But here’s the thing. You don't wait to feel grateful. You choose to practice gratitude. The feelings follow. Every morning, you are empowered to make a conscious choice about where to focus your attention. You can focus on what's missing, what's wrong, who’s against you, and what's hard. Or you can focus on what's present, what's working, what's possible. Both perspectives contain truth. But only one moves you forward toward the success and happiness you are seeking. Here are some practical ways to build gratitude into your daily routine: Keep a gratitude journal. Every morning or evening, write down three things you're grateful for. My friend Eric, who suffered from a severe brain injury, does this, and the impact it has had on his recovery is nothing short of a miracle. Thank someone every day. Send a text, an email, or better yet, make a phone call. Thank a customer. Thank a colleague. Thank a team member. Express genuine appreciation for something specific they've done. People naturally gravitate toward those who express genuine appreciation. When you thank a customer for their business, when you acknowledge a colleague's help, when you recognize someone's support, you strengthen those relationships. It makes you someone people want to work with, buy from, and help succeed. Mentally acknowledge the good. During your day, when something positive happens, pause for just a moment and mentally acknowledge it or say a prayer of thanks. Don't let it pass by unnoticed. Reframe challenges. When something goes wrong, ask yourself: "What can I learn from this? What opportunity might this create? What's the hidden gift in this situation?" This isn't about pretending problems don't exist. It's about looking for the lessons and possibilities within them. Start your week with gratitude. Every Monday, give thanks for the week ahead and the opportunity you’ve been given to make a difference in your life, for your family, company, and customers. The beautiful thing about gratitude is that it is like a muscle; it gets stronger with exercise. My Gratitude to You Before wrapping up, I want to take this opportunity to pause and express my gratitude to you. I'm grateful to you for listening to the Sales Gravy podcast. My team and I pour our hearts into producing this show, and your support means everything to us. Your comments, your reviews, your messages telling us how the podcast has helped you, fuels us. I'm thankful for the fans of my books. Writing is one of my greatest joys in life, and you make that possible. Every time someone tells me that "Fanatical Prospecting," or "Sales EQ," or "The LinkedIn Edge" changed their career, it reminds me why I do this work. I'm grateful for the companies around the world that trust Sales Gravy to train their teams. You let us into your organizations, trust us with your people, and give us the opportunity to make a real difference. That's a privilege we never take for granted. I'm grateful for the sales professionals who invest in themselves through Sales Gravy University. Your commitment to getting better inspires us to keep creating better content. And most of all, I'm grateful for the amazing people who choose to work at Sales Gravy. We are blessed with an incredible team that wakes up every morning focused on serving you and making a difference. They're the reason we can do what we do. Thank you for allowing us to be part of your professional journey. Reflecting on Gratitude So as we head into Thanksgiving week, I’ll leave you with this simple reflection: Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire. If you did, there would be nothing left to reach for, no reason to dream, no horizon pulling you forward. Be thankful that you don't know everything. It means life still has mysteries to reveal and lessons waiting to shape you. Be thankful for the difficult times. It's in these seasons that you grow stronger, wiser, and more resilient. Be thankful for your limitations. They remind you that there is still room to stretch, improve, and become more than you are today. Be thankful for challenges and obstacles. They forge your strength, your courage, and your character. These are the things that truly endure. Be thankful for your mistakes, because each one is a teacher guiding you toward better choices and deeper understanding. Be thankful for what you've been given. Every gift is proof that someone cares, someone believes in you, someone has invested in your journey. Be thankful for the people who push you, support you, frustrate you, and inspire you. Each one plays a role in shaping the person you are becoming. Be thankful for beginnings, endings, and every transition in between. They are the chapters and seasons of a life story still being written. Be thankful for Monday, because Monday brings new possibilities. And at the end of the day, when you are tired and weary, when you’ve stopped and made one more call, be thankful because it means you've made a difference. An attitude of gratitude changes how you approach your day—and your prospects. My new book, The LinkedIn Edge, shows you how to leverage that mindset to build genuine connections, engage with your network, and create opportunities that actually convert.

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• The AI Account Planning Method That Helped a New AE Land C-Suite Appointments

  Most new account executives stare at their territory list and feel the weight of it immediately. Fifty accounts. A hundred accounts. Sometimes more. Each one needs research, a plan, and outreach that doesn't sound like every other cold email clogging their prospect's inbox.  Jake McOsker, an account executive at Forrester Research, found himself facing exactly this problem when he moved from BDR to AE. He cracked it by changing how he used AI for account planning.  "Rather than taking 10 to 15 minutes to get an account plan out or understand who the notable stakeholders and the decision makers that I need to go with," he explained, "it's a 2 to 3 minute process to go through each one of these accounts." The traditional approach to AI account planning doesn't solve the territory problem. You ask ChatGPT or Claude for company information, and you get Wikipedia summaries. Founded in 1987. Headquartered in Dallas. 15,000 employees. The chief sales officer you're calling doesn't care about any of that, and showing up with generic facts makes you look lazy, not prepared. When you're new to the role, you don't have years of pattern recognition to fall back on. You don't know what good account planning looks like yet. You just know you need to get meetings with people who have better things to do than talk to a rep they've never heard of. The solution isn't using AI as a search engine. It's using it as a sales assistant with a specific job to do. The Problem With How Most Reps Use AI for Account Planning Here's what usually happens. A rep needs to prepare for a call with a VP of Marketing at a healthcare company. They open their AI tool of choice and type: "Tell me about [Company Name]." The AI spits back: Company history Product offerings Recent press releases Maybe some executive names The rep skims it, copies a few bullet points into their CRM, and calls it account planning. Then they get on the call and realize they have no idea what this VP is actually trying to accomplish this quarter. They ask surface-level questions. The prospect checks out. The meeting goes nowhere. This happens because most reps are using AI like a faster Google. They're asking for information instead of asking for intelligence. AI account planning only works when you give the AI a role and a specific outcome to deliver. Not "tell me about this company." Instead, "You're an account executive trying to book a meeting with this company's CMO in the next two weeks. Based on their recent announcements and what their executives are posting on LinkedIn, what initiatives are they likely prioritizing right now?" How to Set Up AI Agents for Account Planning The difference between a basic AI chat and an AI agent is memory and context. When you create an agent, you're teaching it what kind of output you need every single time. You're not starting from scratch with every account. Here's the framework that works: Step 1: Give Your AI Agent a Clear Role Don't just ask questions. Set up the scenario with urgency and context. For example: "You are an account executive at [Your Company]. You've been tasked with bringing in [Target Company] as a new customer within the next 90 days. Your first call is with their [specific role, like Chief Sales Officer]. Based on the materials I'm providing, what are the top three business initiatives this person is likely focused on right now?" This does two things. First, it forces the AI to think from your perspective instead of just summarizing data. Second, it prioritizes current, actionable information over historical background. Step 2: Feed It the Right Source Material Wikipedia summaries don't help you. But these sources do: Recent press releases about new initiatives or leadership changes LinkedIn posts from executives at the company (especially the person you're calling) Company blog posts about their strategic direction Industry news articles mentioning the company Their "About Us" or "Newsroom" page for current priorities Analyst reports or industry trend pieces relevant to their sector If you're selling to publicly traded companies, earnings call transcripts and annual reports (10-Ks) are gold mines. But most new AEs aren't calling on Fortune 500 companies. The good news is that smaller companies often share more on LinkedIn and their blogs because they're trying to build their brand. Upload PDFs or paste content directly into your AI tool. Then let it analyze the content through the lens of the role you gave it. The output will focus on strategic priorities, not corporate history. Step 3: Ask Follow-Up Questions Based on Persona If you're calling into marketing, tech, security, or customer experience, the priorities are different. Your AI agent should help you understand how company-wide initiatives affect the specific person you're talking to. After the initial analysis, ask: "How would these initiatives specifically impact the VP of Marketing's goals this quarter?" Now you have talking points that matter to the person on the other end of the call. Step 4: Validate With Human Intelligence AI gets you 80% of the way there in three minutes instead of fifteen. But you still need to cross-check. Look at LinkedIn. Check recent news. If you have access to account managers or customer success reps who work with similar companies, ask them if the trends you're seeing match reality. AI account planning is a tool, not a replacement for critical thinking. If the output feels off, it probably is. Trust your gut and adjust. How to Turn Research Into Value Messages The goal of account planning isn't to memorize facts about a company. It's to walk into a conversation with an informed hypothesis about what they're trying to accomplish. When you do this right, your opening changes. Instead of starting cold with "Tell me about your role," you can say: "I saw your CEO recently posted about accelerating your digital customer experience, and I'm assuming that's putting some pressure on your team to modernize how you're approaching customer engagement. But I could be completely wrong. What's actually taking up most of your time right now?" Here’s how you’ve impacted your prospect: First, it proves you did real research. Second, it gives the prospect something specific to react to instead of making them explain their entire world from scratch. Third, and this is critical, it still leaves room for discovery. You're not skipping the "What are your biggest challenges?" question. You're earning the right to ask them by showing you've already thought about their business. When prospects talk about their challenges in their own language, you learn how they frame problems, what matters to them, and where your solution might actually fit. Even if your hypothesis is wrong, you've separated yourself from the 90% of reps who show up with nothing. And when you're right, you skip past the surface-level conversation and get straight into the dialogue that matters. That's how you earn credibility as a new account executive, even when you don't have ten years of experience to lean on. Building a Repeatable AI Account Planning Workflow This only scales if you systematize it. You can't rely on remembering the perfect prompt every time or recreating your process from scratch for every account. Create separate agents for different use cases. One for account planning. One for prospecting outreach. One for call preparation. Train each agent for the output you need so you aren’t constantly course-correcting. Save your account plans in a central location. The information changes, so plan to refresh your research quarterly. What mattered in Q2 might not matter in Q4, and your account planning needs to reflect that. The key is building a system that you can repeat across your entire territory without burning out. Two to three minutes per account. Not fifteen. Not thirty. That's how you research 50 accounts in a week instead of just five. What This Actually Looks Like in Practice Let's say you're targeting a mid-market software company. You start by checking their LinkedIn. The CEO posted last week about expanding into healthcare verticals. You pull up their blog and find three recent posts about compliance challenges in healthcare tech. You upload screenshots or copy the text into your AI agent and give it the prompt: "You're an AE trying to close this software company in 90 days. The first meeting is with their Chief Revenue Officer. What are the top three priorities they're likely focused on, and how do those connect to the company's broader goals?" The AI analyzes the content and tells you: They're investing heavily in healthcare vertical expansion, but facing longer sales cycles due to compliance requirements They're dealing with the need to build credibility fast in a regulated industry Their CEO has committed to proving ROI in healthcare within two quarters Now you have a hypothesis. The CRO is probably under pressure to close healthcare deals faster while managing a team that doesn't have deep healthcare expertise. That's your angle. You cross-check this with LinkedIn and see that the CRO has been engaging with posts about sales enablement in complex verticals. You look at recent news and find they just hired a VP of Healthcare Sales. Everything lines up. Your outreach message writes itself. You're not pitching. You're acknowledging what they're working on and offering a perspective on how companies in similar situations have approached the same problem. What to Do After the Meeting Your AI workflow doesn't end when the call does. This is where most reps leave value on the table. After your meeting, take the transcript from your call recording tool (Fathom, Gong, Chorus, whatever you use) and upload it to your AI agent. Then ask specific questions:

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• Beat Sales Call Reluctance and Get Back to Fanatical Prospecting (Ask Jeb)

  Here's a question that hits closer to home than most sales reps want to admit: What do you do when you've been away from prospecting for a while and suddenly the call reluctance feels brand new again? That's the situation Dwayne Malmberg from Sugar Land, Texas found himself in. He'd been crushing it in inside sales and appointment setting since the 90s. He was good at it. Really good. But after taking just over two years away from the phones, a new opportunity came along and suddenly he was facing something he didn't expect. The call reluctance. The trepidation. The mental resistance to picking up that phone and dialing invisible strangers. If you've ever taken time away from prospecting and felt that same knot in your stomach when it's time to get back on the phones, you're not alone. And more importantly, there's a systematic way to rebuild that muscle and get back to crushing it. The Raw Truth About Cold Calling Fear Let's get brutally honest: Cold calling creates emotional angst. Period. I've made tens of thousands of cold calls. I make them with my clients during training sessions. I'll make them tomorrow morning. And I still feel that trepidation on the first couple of calls of the day. It's just human. It's natural. It never completely goes away. Think about it like jumping out of an airplane. A few years ago, I got the chance to jump with the United States Army Golden Knights. I was terrified. My heart was pounding. A sergeant even asked if I was okay because apparently I looked frightened. When we got strapped in, I turned to the Golden Knight I was jumping with and asked, "Do you ever get scared?" His answer was revealing: "Yeah, of course I do. My heart's beating a little bit because it's an airplane and I don't know what's going to happen. But I've done it so many times and I've got a routine." That's the key. The routine. The process. The mental preparation that gets you past the fear and into action. The Big Pull: Why You Need Something Worth Fighting For Here's the problem with facing fear: If you don't have something pulling you forward that's bigger than the discomfort you're feeling right now, you'll procrastinate forever. The discipline to run a prospecting block and do your prospecting is the discipline to sacrifice what you want now for what you want most. So before you even think about picking up the phone, sit down and write out what you want. Why are you doing this? What's the goal? Is it a paycheck? A promotion? Financial freedom? Providing for your family? That's your big pull. That's what you focus on when you start your day, not whatever might happen on the call. Because when you're thinking about something as scary as facing rejection, if you don't have a big pull driving you, you'll end up avoiding the work that matters most. For Dwayne, part of his why was clear: He's a caregiver for his disabled wife and needs the flexibility to work from home while still providing for his family. That's a powerful pull. That's something worth pushing through fear for. Building the Muscle: You Can't Bench Press 250 on Day One Let's say you were a bodybuilder in your 30s. You were strong, lifting heavy, crushing it in the gym. Then life happened. Kids came along. Your career took off. You quit working out. Now you decide it's time to get back in shape. What happens if you walk into the gym and try to bench press 250 pounds on day one? You're going to hurt yourself. Maybe badly. The same principle applies to prospecting after time away. You already know how to do it. You've got the muscle memory. Everything inside you is saying, "I got this." But you can't expect to jump back in at the same intensity level you had before. You have to rebuild the muscle gradually. Start with the equivalent of those 20-pound dumbbells and work your way back up. The High-Intensity Sprint Strategy When I found myself in a similar situation years ago, uncomfortable and fearful about making calls, I developed a strategy that I now call high-intensity prospecting sprints. Here's how it works: Break your prospecting into very small, short blocks. Sometimes just five minutes. Make five calls in five minutes. Or ten minutes. Or fifteen minutes. The key is this: Make it so small and manageable that your brain can't talk you out of it. If I tell you to make cold calls all day long, that feels overwhelming. But if I ask you to knock out just five calls, you can do that. Then here's the critical part: Follow each sprint with something inspiring. Read a chapter from Fanatical Prospecting. Listen to a segment of your favorite sales podcast. Watch a training video. Put good stuff in your ears and in front of your eyes that builds your courage and strengthens your heart. Then do another sprint. More inspiration. Another sprint. Repeat. What happens is two things: First, by actually doing it instead of thinking about it, you get better at doing it. You get what I call sales endorphins. You feel good about yourself because you realize, "Hey, I can do this. Everything's okay." Second, by backing up each sprint with inspirational content, you're feeding your mindset. You're building back that mental muscle alongside the practical muscle. The Time Management Factor for Busy Sales Professionals If you're like Dwayne and have a lot of responsibilities outside of sales, time management becomes critical. You can't afford to waste time or dilute your prospecting efforts. The solution is ruthless prioritization and time blocking. Start your day with your most important, highest priority sales activity. Get your prospecting done first thing in the morning when your willpower is strongest and your emotional energy is highest. Here's why this matters: When you've got a lot going on and you're also doing the hardest job in sales (making outbound calls), by the time you get later into your day, you're worn out. Your willpower is depleted. It's going to be exponentially harder to find the motivation to interrupt strangers. But first thing in the morning? You're fresh. You're ready. You can knock out that prospecting block and then ride that momentum through the rest of your day. Block your calendar in core chunks for everything you need to do. If you have an appointment at 3 PM that'll take three hours, fine. But that first hour of your day? That's sacred prospecting time. Nothing else touches it. The Mindset Foundation: Feed Your Mind Daily The first section of Fanatical Prospecting focuses on mindset because that's where everything begins. If your mindset isn't right, technique doesn't matter. Scripts don't matter. Nothing matters because you won't execute. Feed your mind daily with content that builds you up. Listen to a sales podcast three days a week. Read sales books. Watch training videos. Surround yourself with messages that reinforce the behaviors you want to develop. When you're in a situation where you feel fear or emotional angst, putting good stuff in your ears and eyes has a tendency to make your heart stronger and build your courage. This isn't fluffy motivation. This is practical psychology. You're literally rewiring your brain to associate prospecting with positive emotions instead of fear and anxiety. The Bottom Line Getting back in the prospecting game after time away isn't about summoning superhuman courage or pretending the fear doesn't exist. It's about acknowledging the fear, building a routine to work through it, and gradually rebuilding the muscle you once had. You already know how to do this. You've done it before. You just need to give yourself permission to start small, build consistently, and focus on progress over perfection. Start with your why. Build your prospecting sprints. Front-load your day. Feed your mind with the right content. And remember: The first call is always the hardest because you're lifting that 10,000-pound weight. But once you make it, the momentum starts building. You've got this. Now go pick up the phone and prove it to yourself. Want to learn how to leverage LinkedIn to fill your pipeline and never run out of opportunities? Check out Jeb Blount's latest book with Brynne Tillman, The LinkedIn Edge, and discover how to turn social selling into your secret weapon.

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About Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount