Why do prospects hang up on your cold calls before you can even explain why you’re calling?

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount coaches Sindy, a business development manager in Toronto selling global freight forwarding services, through three questions: how to turn more cold calls into appointments, where video prospecting fits in a sequence, and how to stay motivated when prospecting gets hard.

Jeb rebuilds Sindy’s cold call opener live on the show. He cuts the trigger words that get her hung up on, leads with her expertise, and builds a because statement that gives the prospect a relevant reason to meet. The goal of a prospecting call is to sell time, and Jeb shows how to save the problem talk for discovery. As he puts it, people meet with you for their reasons, not yours.

What You’ll Learn:

• What a realistic cold call to appointment conversion rate is and how to track yours
• How to stop getting hung up on in the first few seconds of a cold call
• How to write a because statement that gives prospects a relevant reason to meet with you
• Why leading with your expertise sounds more confident than leading with the prospect’s problem
• What belongs on a prospecting call and what to save for the discovery meeting
• How to A/B test your cold call opener to find what works
• How to build a multi-touch prospecting sequence with phone, email, in-person drop ins, and handwritten notes
• When and how to use video in your prospecting sequence
• Jeb’s recommended Money Monday episodes for resilience and bouncing back after a tough prospecting day

Resources Mentioned:

• George Foreman’s Masterclass on Resilience (Money Monday): Listen here
• Failure is Not Permanent (Money Monday): Listen here
• Scottie Scheffler, Goldfish, and Bouncing Back in Sales (Money Monday): Listen here

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You pull up the next number and start talking yourself out of it: “I’m going to bother them. I’ll sound salesy.” Suddenly, the phone weighs a thousand pounds. If you’re waiting to feel confident before you dial, Jessica Stokes says you have it backwards. Confidence comes from repetition. She shows you how to build momentum with warmer contacts, when email and LinkedIn become hiding places, and why a 15-minute daily challenge beats waiting until you feel ready.

👉 Download our free Cold Calling Guide with 25 Scripts to Ask for an Appointment

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Jessica Stokes

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Your CRM was already a mess. Now every tool in your stack wants to switch on its own AI agent, and all of them are running on bad data. Jeb Blount Jr. sits down with Jayant Umrani and Steve Keck of Bolt.today to break down what CRM optimization looks like when AI moves this fast, and why the fix starts with the reps who actually use the system.

👉 Download our free 7 Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences Guide

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube

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When every product in your market looks the same, the only way you win is for your competitor to lose.

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount takes a question from Jen, a 20-year sales veteran who moved from TV into digital advertising and has watched three deals in a row end with the prospect sticking with their current provider.

Jeb’s advice starts with the sales process. The buyer’s emotional experience is the most consistent predictor of whether you win, so stop fixating on the close and look at how you run discovery, how many commitments you ask for, and whether you can drive a wedge between the prospect and the incumbent. Sometimes the right move is to walk away before you hand your competitor your proposal. If you sell in a crowded market and keep losing to the incumbent, this episode will help you lay the groundwork for competitive displacement.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why prospects stick with the status quo and what to do when you keep losing deals to no decision
• How to compete in a commoditized market where every company and product looks the same
• The five decisions buyers make before they choose to work with you
• Why past customers, including accounts other reps once handled, are the best place to start prospecting
• How adding steps to your sales process builds buyer commitment through the investment effect
• Why sending your detailed proposal too early can give the incumbent vendor everything they need to keep the account
• How to find out if a prospect is willing to change
• How to ask discovery questions that help prospects realize their current vendor is taking them for granted
• When to walk away from a deal and focus your pipeline on high-probability opportunities

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Your stalled deals are still alive. When the buying window opens, the buyer calls the salesperson they remember. Sales Gravy Master Sales Trainer Duff Tucker breaks down top-of-mind selling: why “just checking in” drains your value, how every touch becomes a deposit or withdrawal in the buyer’s memory bank, the five types of touches that keep you relevant, and the VALUE framework for deciding what’s worth sending.

👉 Download our free 7 Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences Guide

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Check out Duff Tucker's courses on Sales Gravy University

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Ask a prospect about their challenges and you’ll get the same answer every other seller heard that week. Marcus Chan, Founder of Venli Consulting, joins Jeb Blount Jr. to break down the questions elite reps ask instead, the ones that tie a problem to real consequences and lead buyers to discover latent pain on their own. Marcus walks through an oil change story every rep will recognize and explains how this shift helped his SMB team grow average deal size roughly fourfold.

👉 Download our Free Playbook for Understanding the Four Buyer Styles

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

🔗 Watch the full episode on YouTube!

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If you can’t figure out who makes the buying decision, every cold call starts with a guess.

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount answers a question from David, a business development rep making a high volume of cold calls daily into a highly technical market. His challenge: how much research is enough before you dial, and how do you find the right contact when the decision maker could be an engineer, a project manager, or the CEO?

Jeb’s answer starts with a mindset shift. Prospecting and research are separate jobs, so block time for each and never do both at once. He then walks David through an ABCD list system that moves every lead toward fully qualified, so your first call block goes to appointment-ready prospects and the rest of the day builds tomorrow’s list.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to find the decision maker when job titles don’t tell you who buys
• How to get the gatekeeper to give you the contact you need within the organization
• Why separating prospecting time from research time protects your call blocks
• How to sort prospects into A, B, C, and D lists so every call has a clear goal
• How to build qualifiers that tell you when a lead is ready for an appointment
• Why multithreading matters in complex sales
• How to use AI tools to help you build a local prospecting list in minutes
• How to build an ideal customer profile with your team to stop setting unqualified appointments
• Why every new piece of information counts as a win for SDRs and BDRs

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Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

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Homeowners decide within seconds whether to trust the person on their porch. Jessica Stokes shares nine door-to-door prospecting tips to make those seconds count, from the because statement that turns a pitch into a conversation to handling objections without arguing and turning a quick doorstep chat into a scheduled follow-up.

👉 Download our free 7 Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences Guide

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Jessica Stokes

Our Sponsors:
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Your CRM says the quarter is safe. So why does the forecast keep slipping? Sales Gravy Master Trainer Jessica Stokes joins Jeb Blount Jr. to explain why so many pipelines look bigger than they are, and why deals without a confirmed meeting on the calendar are the first to stall. They dig into the fear that keeps reps clinging to dead deals, a simple 15-minute calendar invite that gets quiet prospects to respond, and how Jessica became her team’s top seller with the leanest pipeline. Whether you carry a quota or coach the people who do, you’ll know exactly which deals are real after your next sales pipeline review.

👉 Download our Free 7 Step Guide to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences

📖 Purchase Jeb Blount's new book, 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

💻 Enroll in Sales Gravy University Courses with Jessica Stokes

🔗 Watch the full episode on YouTube!

Our Sponsors:
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What should you say on a cold call to book the appointment?

In this episode of Ask Jeb on the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount takes a question from Ryan, a real estate agent in Brooklyn, New York, who prospects expired listings and FSBOs and wants to know how to structure his because statement to land more meetings.

Jeb’s advice is to get direct. An expired listing came off the market because it didn’t sell, so call it like it is, lead with the value you bring, and ask for the meeting with a specific time. When getting in front of the seller wins you the listing most of the time, the call has one job: book that meeting.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to write a because statement that books appointments on cold calls
• Why passive openers and permission-based questions invite objections
• How to use the prospecting pyramid to organize your call list
• Why FSBO prospecting is a relationship you nurture until the seller is ready
• Why in-person meetings convert better than phone conversations
• How to ask for the appointment assumptively

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Submit your question: salesgravy.com/ask

Purchase Jeb Blount's new book: 90 Days to Level Up Your Sales Skills

Grab your tickets for OutBound Conference

Follow Jeb Blount on LinkedIn

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Colonel Sanders heard no more than a thousand times while sleeping in his car. Stephen King needed a spike to hold all his rejection letters. Steve Jobs got fired from his own company. Jeb Blount breaks down what salespeople can learn from people who got rejected more than anyone, and why the reps who make the most money are the ones willing to hear no the most.

👉 Download Our Free Playbook for Selling to the Four Types of Buyers

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