Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Brad Beeler, author of Tell Me Everything and retired Secret Service agent who has conducted more criminal polygraphs than anyone in the agency’s history, was clearing a house on a search warrant when he came across two dogs: a pitbull and a Chihuahua.

His focus locked on the pitbull. The stereotype. The threat.

Meanwhile, the Chihuahua circled behind him and jumped up, latching onto him right between the legs while his partner stood there laughing.

We assign horns and halos fast. Brad learned that lesson with dogs. You learn it every time a prospect shuts down before you finish your introduction.

Horns mean danger. Hurtful. Someone here to take from me.

Halo means safe. Helpful. On my side.

Over 25 years of getting people to confess to federal crimes, Brad discovered something powerful: the same instincts that get hardened criminals to talk work in conference rooms. The techniques that break through with people who have every reason to lie also work on prospects who have every reason to brush you off.

Because in both environments, trust determines everything.

Why Building Trust With Prospects Is Harder Than You Think

Your brain’s been running this horns-and-halos program for 300,000 years. When something rustled in the bushes, you made a split-second decision: climb a tree or fight. That quick judgment kept you alive.

The moment you walk into a prospect meeting, their brain assigns you horns automatically. You are the salesperson. The interruption. The person asking for their budget. In their mind, you represent risk before you ever speak.

It happens on cold calls. You say, “Hi, this is…” and they are already calculating how to end the conversation. On discovery calls. In demos. At conferences when you introduce yourself. Every single time.

You are fighting ancient wiring every time you engage a buyer. So what can you control? The first 90 seconds.

How to Build Trust in the First 90 Seconds

We remember first impressions and last impressions. In most meetings, it begins and ends with a handshake.

Brad puts antiperspirant on his right hand. He warms his hands before entering a room. He holds eye contact for one second. Faces the person straight on. Slows his pace. Lowers his tone.

It sounds mechanical. But every one of these micro-decisions either confirms horns or begins to build a halo.

Wet handshake? You’re nervous, unprepared, not confident in what you’re selling.

Avoiding eye contact? You’re hiding something or you don’t believe in your own pitch.

Talking too fast? You’re trying to get something past them before they catch on.

When you control these variables, people’s guard comes down faster. You’re giving their brain evidence that maybe, just maybe, you’re not the threat they assumed you were.

The Trust-Building Technique Most Salespeople Get Wrong

Brad would sit across from murder suspects and open with one line: “I need you to help me understand.”

Humans are hardwired to explain. When you position yourself as the learner, something shifts. They become the expert. Their guard drops. They start talking.

Most salespeople walk in ready to educate. Your deck. Your case studies. Your demo. You’re there to prove you know their problems better than they do.

Sometimes that works. But think about what it communicates: “I already know what’s wrong with your business. I just need you to agree with me and sign here.”

Instead, try:

“Walk me through what happens when your team processes a new order.”

“Help me understand how you’re handling onboarding right now.”

“What’s your biggest bottleneck?”

Invert the dynamic. You’re not there to impress them. You’re there to learn from them. Once buyers start explaining their world, they reveal what matters.

The workaround their team built. The spreadsheet that breaks every month. The process leadership thinks is automated but is completely manual.

That’s the information that moves your deal forward.

How to Build Rapport Before the Real Conversation Starts

Before interrogating two suspects, Brad bought them food. Popeyes for one. McDonald’s for the other. Twenty-two dollars total.

The next day, the woman’s on a jail call: “Yeah, they got me with the McDonald’s. That’s why I confessed.”

It was not about the food. It was about comfort. Lowering the guard. Creating what Brad calls a confessional environment where people feel safe telling the truth.

You’re probably not buying prospects lunch before your first call. But the principle still applies.

Show up five minutes early so they don’t feel rushed. Ask about their weekend before diving into business. Acknowledge that you know their time is valuable. Turn your camera off if they seem uncomfortable on video. Send the agenda beforehand so there are no surprises.

These are small friction eliminators. They signal: I’m not here to ambush you. I’m not trying to catch you off guard. We’re having a conversation, not a pitch.

The prospect who feels safe tells you what’s really going on. The prospect who feels ambushed gives you the corporate line and ends the call early.

What Happens When You Actually Build Trust With Buyers

When buyers move you from horns to halo, everything changes.

They stop filtering their answers. They tell you what keeps them up at night. They admit where the process breaks. They share internal pressure you would never see in a polished demo.

I’ve watched this play out hundreds of times. The rep who asks better questions closes more deals than the rep with the better demo. The rep who makes prospects comfortable gets to real problems faster than the rep with the perfect pitch.

Brad spent 25 years getting people to confess to federal crimes. He still warms up his hands before handshakes. Still slows his speech. Still positions himself as someone who needs to learn.

Why? Because building trust isn’t about personality or natural charisma. It’s about technique. These methods work because they’re based on how humans actually operate, not how we wish they operated.

And when buyers tell you the truth, you can actually help them.

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Download our free Sales EQ Book Club Guide to master the emotional intelligence skills that help you read prospects and close more deals.

Let me ask you: What if the biggest thing standing between you and your next closed deal had nothing to do with your product knowledge, your pricing, or your pitch? What if it came down to three simple micro behaviors that most salespeople never bother to master?

I was speaking to a group of students and marketing professionals at BYU-Idaho recently, and this question came up in a great way. We were talking about what actually drives buying decisions, and I shared something I believe with every fiber of my being: your prospect’s emotional experience with you as they walk through their decision journey is a more consistent predictor of outcome than any other variable.

Read that again. Their emotional experience. Not your features. Not your price. Not your killer deck.

People are asking five questions as they go through a decision to buy:

Do I like you?

Do you listen to me?

Do you make me feel important?

Do you understand me?

Can I trust you?

If you can get to yes on all five, you win. And the micro behaviors below are exactly how you do it.

Micro Behavior #1: Read the Room

Authenticity without respect for your audience is arrogance.

I know that sounds blunt, but I mean it. I see salespeople all the time who show up however they want to show up, dressed however they feel like dressing, presenting however they feel comfortable, and then wonder why the deal stalled. Being “authentic” does not mean ignoring your buyer. It means showing up for your buyer.

When I was in outside sales doing field work, I had clothes hanging in my car on a hanger. If I was walking into a company where everyone wore suits, I put on a jacket and a tie. If I was walking into a manufacturing plant full of people in polo shirts, I changed in the parking lot. When I sold in Clemson, South Carolina, I wore a Tiger tie. I’m a Georgia Bulldog, but I was in their house. Showing up in Clemson with a Dawgs tie would have cost me the deal before I ever opened my mouth.

Reading the room is not fake. It is the highest form of respect you can show another person. It says: I see you. I came prepared for you. You matter to me.

That one shift, from showing up for yourself to showing up for your buyer, will change your results immediately.

Micro Behavior #2: Shut Up and Listen

This is the easiest and fastest way to be likable on the planet, and most salespeople still will not do it.

When you give another human being your full, undivided attention and actually listen to them, they fall in love with you. I am not exaggerating. I said this to the students at BYU-Idaho and I will say it here: if you just listen to people, they will do almost anything you ask them to do.

Why? Because the most insatiable human need is the need to feel important. To feel like you matter. And when you give someone your full attention, you are filling that need in a way that almost nobody else in their life is willing to do.

The mechanics are simple. Ask a great question. Then shut up. Resist every urge to jump in, interject, or start mentally composing your response while they are still talking. Just listen.

The reason this is hard is that when our mouth is not moving, we do not feel important. We feel like we are losing ground. We feel like silence is weakness. It is not. Silence and attention are your greatest sales weapons.

Micro Behavior #3: Tell Them Their Own Story Back to Them

This one is where everything clicks together.

Once you have listened, here is what you do when you open your mouth: tell them the story they just told you, back to them, in the context of how you can help them.

Let me say that one more time because it is that important.

When words come out of your mouth, you should be telling your prospect the story they just told you about themselves and their situation, framed around how you can solve their problem. That is it. That is the whole game.

This answers the question every buyer is silently asking: “Does this person actually understand me?” And even if you do not get every detail right, if they can see you are genuinely trying to understand, they will still feel it. They will still think: this person cares about me.

When you can read the room, listen without an agenda, and reflect their story back to them in a way that connects to your solution, you have answered yes to four of those five buying questions before you ever ask for anything.

One More Thing: The Pipe Is Life

I was asked at the end of that BYU-Idaho session: “If you could leave us with one thing, what would it be?”

My answer was immediate. The pipe is life.

It does not matter how likable you are. It does not matter how well you listen. It does not matter if you have mastered every micro behavior in this post. If you do not have a pipeline, none of it matters. The number one reason salespeople fail is an empty pipeline. And the number one reason pipelines are empty is that salespeople stop doing the prospecting work every single day.

Especially on the days you are tired. Especially at the end of the day when you just want to go home. Feed the pipe. Pick up the phone. Make one more call.

Join Sales Gravy at our next live workshop event. These are high-energy, immersive experiences built to sharpen your mindset, your skills, and your pipeline. Get the details and register at salesgravy.com/live.

One of the most vivid memories from my childhood was the day I was bucked off my pony, Macaroni. I was only six years old. We were in an arena where my mother was giving me my very first riding lessons. 

Macaroni was stung by a bee, and she reacted by bucking. I couldn’t hang on, and I landed hard on my back. It knocked the breath out of me. I gasped for air. Then, as I finally caught my breath, I started bawling at the shock of being involuntarily dismounted. 

My mom caught the pony, led her back over to me, and gently told me to dust myself off and get back on. But by this time, I was sobbing the way kids do when they’ve cried so hard that they can’t stop. 

Failure is Just a Bruise

I shook my head and refused to get back on the pony. My mother tried her best to calm me down and reason with me, but I still refused to get back on. 

Then she took a different tactic and got tough. Her stern, direct tone of voice made it clear that she was not asking me to get back on the pony—she was telling me. That’s what I remember the most because my mom had never talked to me like that before and has rarely ever used that tone and directness since. 

“Get up, and get back on that pony now!” she admonished. 

She was unmovable. Like Teflon. My tears and pleading made no difference. I knew I had no choice, so I stood up, shaking. Still trying to catch my breath, she helped me get back on the pony. 

Right there in the riding ring, at six years old, I experienced one of the most pivotal lessons of my life. My mother taught me that failure is just a bruise, not a tattoo. 

She wasn’t being cruel; she was being protective—protective of my future self, the one who might otherwise have carried an irrational fear of horses, or an ingrained habit of backing down at the first taste of adversity into the rest of my life.

She knew that if she had let me off the hook and let me walk away from that pony, there was a good chance that I’d never get back on again. That the fear I felt when I landed on my back in the sand would grow and gain a life of its own. That I would vow to never let the pain and embarrassment of falling off happen to me again, and with that, my brush with failure would become permanent. 

Failure Can’t Really Bite You

The truth is, failure is usually a short-lived event. Yes, it’s jarring, unexpected, and can momentarily knock the breath out of you. But it doesn’t have to be the defining chapter of your story. 

That’s what my mother understood so well in that riding ring. She insisted that I face my fear, effectively telling me, “Hey, the worst part’s over. Now that you’ve experienced fear and failure, get back on and prove to yourself you can handle it.” 

Because once you push through that initial sting, you discover that the fear can’t really bite you unless you give it teeth in your own mind. 

When Failure Becomes Permanent

For far too many people, though, the pain of failure does become permanent. Instead of allowing themselves a moment to dust off and try again, they walk away in defeat—often without fully grasping the long-term impact of that decision. 

Rather than letting the bruise fade, they opt to memorialize failure in their minds, assigning it more meaning than it deserves. They replay the embarrassment and pain over and over, until it becomes an unspoken vow: “Never again.” 

And in that single choice, a brief setback can morph into a defining moment in which they forfeit the chance to learn, grow, and eventually experience the sweetness of victory.

Think about how this scenario plays out in everyday life. Maybe you dream of learning a new skill—painting, playing guitar, writing a book, starting a podcast—but in your first attempt, you falter or feel foolish. Rather than chalking it up to “beginner’s missteps,” you decide: “I’m terrible at this; I’ll never try again.”

And that small bruise becomes a tattoo right there, on the spot. You miss out on the personal growth, the fun, and potentially incredible experiences you would have discovered if you’d simply dusted yourself off and tried again.

Sales is a Tapestry of Failure

In sales, this avoidance of failure is just as prevalent, if not more so, because the stakes often involve your income or your reputation at work. 

One day, you run a sales call that goes terribly off the rails—the prospect is disinterested, you get flustered, or you stumble on a key question. You come away feeling embarrassed, incompetent, maybe even humiliated if it happened in front of your sales manager. 

That single negative experience can color your perception of future calls. You avoid that type of call, that kind of prospect, or that particular approach. You remember that unpleasant feeling so vividly that you decide it’s “safer” never to try again. 

So many sales reps finally gain the courage to cold call a C-level executive at a high-value prospect. Then freeze when they get a hard objection, leaving them feeling small and insecure. Instead of analyzing what went wrong, adjusting their approach, and trying again, they vow, “I’m never calling anyone that high up again.” 

And while that might spare them from momentary embarrassment and discomfort, the long-term consequences are enormous. Their pipeline shrinks and income tanks because they’re playing it safe. And, ultimately, their career crashes because they’re afraid to push outside of their comfort zone.

Sales Failure: Where the Bruise Can Really Hurt

Sales can be bruising. Each rejection takes a piece out of you and can feel like a blow to your self-worth. It’s easy to internalize it. Over time, a string of “no’s” can erode your confidence, making the idea of picking up the phone and calling prospects feel daunting.

Our minds can often be drama queens. When something painful happens, we cling to that memory and replay it, each time piling on new layers of negativity—“I can’t believe I said that,” “What was I thinking,” “I’m so stupid.” In reality, the prospect might barely remember it or might even respect your courage. But to you, it’s all-consuming.

But remember, a “no” in sales is rarely personal. Often, it’s circumstantial—maybe the prospect is having a bad day, or their budget cycle doesn’t align with your proposal, or they had a negative experience with a different vendor and brought that baggage with them into your presentation. 

The more you detach your self-worth from the outcome, the less likely you are to see these “no’s” as permanent markers of failure. Instead, you’ll shift your mindset. You begin to view failure as data that you can use to gain insight into how to improve. You start to treat each rejection as a chance to refine your approach.

Success Stories are Forged in Failure

The true success stories in sales almost always come from people who learned to pick themselves up, analyze the failure, and adapt. They didn’t let the fear of failure overshadow their potential for greatness.  

The best salespeople—and frankly, the happiest people—know that failure is inevitable. Rather than avoiding it, they embrace it. They feel the pain just like anyone else, but recognize that bruises eventually fade. You just have to keep moving forward in order to heal.

At the end of the day, resilience in the face of failure is a choice. It doesn’t always feel like one, especially in the raw moments right after you’ve messed up, taken a big hit, or find yourself on your back in the dirt. 

But as soon as you reclaim your power to stand up, brush off the dust, and climb back on—whether it’s a literal or figurative pony—you’ll find your perspective shifting. Failure no longer holds you hostage. It becomes a footnote in a broader story of your determination and personal growth.

Failure is Only Final If You Make That Choice

So, the next time you bomb a sales call, lose a deal you thought was a lock, get yelled at on a cold call, or face an embarrassing situation in front of your peers, remember: you get to choose. Will this be just a bruise, or will you sear it into your psyche, turning it into a tattoo of permanent self-doubt? 

My challenge to you this week is when things go wrong, to look up and get up. Get back on the phone. Set another meeting. Propose the next big idea. Trust yourself to learn, adapt, and keep going. Will yourself to stop and make one more call. 

Because failure is only final if you decide to never get back on that pony again.

If you haven’t grabbed our FREE guide, 25 Ways to Ask for an Appointment on a Cold Call, download it now at salesgravy.com/cold-calling-guide/.

If you’ve only sold sexy products with cool demos and unique features, you’re probably missing the fundamentals that separate good salespeople from great ones.

Marcus Chan, CEO of Venli Consulting and recent guest on the Sales Gravy podcast, learned to sell in the trenches of commoditized selling: uniforms, facility services, telecom. Industries where you’re locked in multi-year contract cycles, competing against five other vendors who offer the exact same thing, and selling at two to three times the market price.

“In order to get really, really good at selling in the commoditized market, where price seems to be the only factor… you have to learn how to get really good at the sales process,” Chan explains. “You have to be able to take someone who has what I call a latent pain—pain they don’t realize—get them to active and create urgency to move.”

No flash. No sizzle. Just selling.

And that’s exactly why it works.

The First-to-Market Delusion

Chan was talking with a client recently. They’ve closed $5 million in revenue in 12 months. Apple, Fortune 500 companies, massive wins. They’re first to market in a brand new category. Zero competitors.

Their sales team is flying high.

“That’s fantastic,” he told them. “Now what’s your plan for when competitors show up in three years?”

Silence.

Here’s what happens: you get drunk on the product. You don’t have to build real sales skills because the product does the heavy lifting. Then the market matures. Competitors launch. Your “unique” features become nothing new.

Most teams operate under the belief that they’re different. They talk about their proprietary technology, their best-in-class service, and their innovative approach. Meanwhile, buyers are looking at five vendors saying the exact same things.

This isn’t just true for uniforms and telecom. It’s true for SaaS, consulting, financial services. Any market that’s been around longer than 18 months gets commoditized fast.

The question isn’t whether you’re in a commoditized market. The question is whether you know how to sell when you are.

What Commoditized Selling Actually Teaches You

When Chan was selling uniforms at three times the competitor’s price to buyers locked into five-year contracts with other vendors, he had nothing to lean on except process.

He couldn’t say, “Look at this cool new feature.” The uniforms were uniforms. Same fabric. Same colors. Same everything.

He had to learn three skills most salespeople never develop:

Moving buyers from latent pain to active pain. Most buyers don’t think they have a problem. They’re comfortable. They’re “fine” with their current vendor. Your job is to help them realize what they’re losing by staying put, and make it real enough that they care.

Creating urgency when the status quo is locked in. When a buyer is in year three of a five-year contract, there’s zero natural urgency. You have to create it. You have to make the pain of waiting worse than the pain of switching.

Navigating complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles without a product demo to fall back on. You need the operations manager, the finance team, and the C-suite to all agree that switching vendors is worth the headache. And you need to do it without any bells and whistles to distract them from the hard questions.

The Hidden Advantage Nobody Talks About

Mastering commoditized selling makes everything else easier.

Learn to sell uniforms at a premium price, and differentiated products become simple. The hard skills transfer—objection handling, stakeholder navigation, urgency creation.

But the real value is that your process becomes your product.

In commoditized markets, you compete on how you sell. Your discovery process. Your ability to diagnose the real problem. Your consultative approach. The way you make the buyer feel heard and understood.

That’s what buyers remember and what separates you from the five other vendors in their inbox.

Stop Hiding Behind Your Product

Chan sees it all the time with sales teams from “sexy” industries. They lead with features because they can. They lean on their demo because it works. They let the product do the selling.

Until it doesn’t.

Because eventually, every market commoditizes. Your competitor launches the same feature. Buyers stop caring about your “innovative solution” and start asking about price.

The salespeople who win in commoditized markets win because of process, not product. They’ve mastered diagnosis, urgency, and navigating complexity when there’s nothing shiny to distract the buyer.

A Commoditized Market Is the Best Sales Training Ground

If you’re selling in a commoditized market right now, congratulations. You’re getting an education most salespeople never get—how to compete when you’re “just another vendor,” how to create value when the product doesn’t, how to win on process instead of features.

Sell commodities at premium prices to buyers locked into competitor contracts, and you can sell anything. Master the fundamentals where there are no shortcuts, and those fundamentals become automatic.

Move to a market with actual differentiation, and you don’t just have a good product—you have a good product and the skills to sell it.

Winning in Commoditized Selling

The best training ground for sales isn’t the hottest SaaS company or the coolest startup. It’s the “boring,” commoditized industries where the product doesn’t do the work for you. Where you have to diagnose the problem, create urgency, and navigate complexity without flash to hide behind.

The skills you build when nothing else can save you? Those are the skills that make you unstoppable everywhere else.

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If you want to sharpen the fundamentals that win in any market, start with prospecting. Download the free Seven Steps Prospecting Sequence Guide and build a process that creates urgency and fills your pipeline on purpose.

Here’s a question that’ll make every salesperson’s blood pressure spike: What do you do when your cold call gets an objection in the first five seconds because prospects immediately stereotype you as something you’re not?

That’s the challenge facing Rick VanNess from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rick co-founded a company that helps healthcare providers collect on older insurance claims (the ones sitting out 45-90 days that billing departments struggle to get paid). His team augments existing billing operations rather than replacing them.

But here’s the problem: The second Rick mentions what he does, billing directors immediately think “outsourcing” and shut down the conversation. They’ve either had bad experiences with outsourcing or they’re terrified of losing their jobs to a vendor that promises to do it all.

If you’ve ever been stereotyped, dismissed, or written off before you could even explain what you actually do, you know exactly how frustrating this is. And it’s costing you deals.

The Fatal Mistake: Arguing Instead of Agreeing

When a prospect says “We already have billing” or “We don’t outsource,” most salespeople instinctively go into argument mode. They try to explain how they’re different, how they’re not really outsourcing, how their service is special.

This is exactly the wrong move.

Here’s the brutal truth: When you argue with a prospect’s reflexive response, you’re fighting against their primary concern. For a billing director, that concern isn’t whether you can help them. It’s whether you’re going to cost them their job.

Think about that for a second. You’re calling someone whose entire world revolves around protecting their position, especially in an age where AI and automation are threatening white-collar jobs left and right. Their antenna is already up. They’re listening for any reason to say no.

So when you argue with their objection, you’re actually validating their fear. You’re making them dig in deeper.

The Power of the Ledge-Disrupt-Ask Framework

Instead of arguing, try this: Agree with them.

When Rick hears “We already do billing” or “We don’t outsource,” here’s what I told him to say:

“That’s perfect, because none of my customers do outsourcing. They all have internal billing departments. What we do is complement what they’re already doing by picking up the really hard things like collecting on insurance claims that have been sitting for 45 to 90 days and getting them paid faster.”

Notice what’s happening here? You’re using the Ledge framework that top performers use to handle objections:

Ledge: A simple statement that settles your brain and lowers tension (“That’s perfect…”)

Disrupt: Pattern interrupt that reframes the conversation (“…because none of my customers do outsourcing”)

Ask: Move toward a meeting (“Wouldn’t it make sense for us to take a few minutes to see if this could help you?”)

You’re not fighting them. You’re joining them on their side of the table, then pivoting to the real problem you solve.

Lead With the Problem, Not Your Solution

Here’s another critical mistake Rick was making: He was leading with his pricing model (“no risk to you, you don’t pay until we collect”).

While this might sound like a great selling point to you, to a prospect it sounds like every other too-good-to-be-true pitch they’ve heard. It creates skepticism rather than interest.

Instead, focus obsessively on the problem you solve. For Rick’s business, that’s the money sitting in accounts receivable that billing departments are too busy to collect. According to industry data, many practices have millions sitting out there at 45+ days.

That’s pure profit that’s not in the business. That’s real money being left on the table.

When you frame your prospecting messaging around the problem rather than your solution mechanics, you create curiosity and urgency. Save the pricing conversation for when you’re actually negotiating an agreement.

The Multi-Level Prospecting Strategy

One of the most powerful insights from my conversation with Rick was this: Don’t limit yourself to just one contact at the organization.

Rick was focusing solely on billing directors and managers because they’d at least give him 15 seconds. But there’s a better approach.

Go bottom-up and top-down simultaneously:

Bottom-up: Call claims adjusters and billing clerks. They don’t care what you’re selling. But they’ll tell you exactly what’s broken in their organization. Ask questions like “How much money do you have sitting out there over 45 days that you’re struggling to collect?” These narrators give you the stories and data points you need.

Top-down: Use that intelligence to reach the CFO. Now you’re not pitching a service. You’re providing insight about their business: “I spoke with your team and discovered you have $5 million in receivables sitting at 45+ days. Here’s how we help organizations like yours collect 80% of that money 40% faster.”

Middle-out: Armed with data from below and endorsement from above, the billing director conversation becomes completely different. You’re not a threat. You’re a resource.

This is straight from the Sales EQ playbook: Read the room, understand everyone’s motivations, and position yourself as the person who makes everyone’s life better, not worse.

Stand in Their Shoes

The breakthrough moment in any prospecting challenge comes when you stop thinking about your message from your perspective and start viewing the world through your prospect’s lens.

When you call a billing director, their number one job is to protect their position. When you call a CFO, their primary concern is whether this conversation is worth their time. When you call someone lower in the organization, they’re just trying to get through their day without more headaches.

Your job isn’t to convince them you’re different. Your job is to meet them where they are, validate their concerns, and then show them how what you do makes their specific situation better.

That’s how you stop getting objections and start closing.

The Bottom Line

Stop fighting your prospects’ reflexive objections. When they say “We already have that” or “We don’t need outsourcing,” the worst thing you can do is argue with them.

Instead, agree with them. Everyone you work with already has that. Then pivot to the gap you fill and the problem you solve.

Save your solution mechanics for later. Lead with problems, not pricing. And remember: The best salespeople aren’t the ones who argue the hardest. They’re the ones who listen the deepest and position themselves on the same side of the table as their prospects.

That’s how you break through buyer resistance. That’s how you build trust. And that’s how you win deals others walk away from.

Want to master the art of breaking through buyer resistance? Join us at Outbound 2026 in Las Vegas this November, where we’ll be diving deep into strategies for overcoming objections, building rapport, and closing more deals. Learn more and grab your ticket at salesgravy.com/live.