If There’s No Next Step, There’s No Deal

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1:23Jessica Stokes: our biggest, baddest conference for pipeline productivity and prospecting. We're going to be covering the topic of breaking through buyer resistance. If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, go to outboundconference.com. That's outboundconference.com and go get those tickets right now. If you're looking for a group, if you are a leader and you want to bring your team, give us a message on our website. We are going to be able to help you out with some group rates. That's outboundconference.com. Jessica, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

1:48Jeb Blount Jr.: I'm so excited to be here. And I love getting the chance to talk to you and to our listeners, one of my favorite seats to sit in.

1:54Jessica Stokes: It's so much fun when you're actually able to make it into the studios. You're a senior master trainer for Sales Gravy. You've been with us for years, a favorite of anybody who is on the Sales Gravy University platform. You are a mainstay of our public courses there and have quite a following actually to the Sales Gravy audience. And we're very excited to have you here and on the outbound stage because you're going to be talking about something that's really interesting. Right before our conversation here on the podcast, we were doing a little bit of chat about what we might talk about and where we might go with this conversation.

2:21Jessica Stokes: And the topic was brought up about pipeline. So having deals in the pipeline that aren't closing or having no pipeline and nothing to close and what leaders are dealing with and what they think is the problem versus what really is the problem. And you work with organizations and all kinds of industries all over the world. I want to ask you about what you think leaders are diagnosing as a pipeline problem, but what they're actually missing on the ground when it comes to driving revenue for their business.

2:46Jeb Blount Jr.: I love this question because we see very often that sales leadership might look at what's going on with the book of business, what's going on with the pipeline and say, oh, well, X is the problem. But when we dig in a little deeper, there's sometimes something different. Now, I do think that in some cases when sales leaders are looking at the pipeline, they can get overly confident with the deals they're looking at.

3:06Jessica Stokes: Tell me a little bit about this confidence. Walk through the overconfidence when they look at a pipeline. What are they seeing that gives them that overconfidence? Maybe like what's the hopefulness or the mindset there?

3:16Jeb Blount Jr.: When they're looking at the pipeline as overly confident, What happens is we're looking in Salesforce or we're looking in HubSpot, however, we're tracking our pipeline. And we are hopeful or optimistic that everything in there has a strong likelihood to close, regardless of our win percentages, whether it's 15 percent, 80, 90. And even that's a whole other podcast episode, like how many salespeople want to only put it at 50 percent, even though it should be 90, you know, whatever. But what leaders look at is they might say, well, Jeb, your pipeline is pretty full. You know, you have 15 deals projected to close this month or this quarter, which kind of keeps you in the safe zone.

3:47Jeb Blount Jr.: The truth is no one has a 100 percent closing ratio, not even Jeb Blunt Sr., right? Like we all are going to have those deals that slip through the cracks, the ones that all of a sudden there is some change at the customer or they punt it out till next year, not this quarter. So I'd say that's one of the first things that I think leaders overlook is that those things are going to happen. And this rep is not going to close everything that's listed on that projected pipeline.

4:13Jessica Stokes: So you're a sales leader, maybe you're a VP of sales, but really maybe you're a director of sales. You're looking at maybe some of your managers, maybe you're a frontline sales leader and you've got six reps underneath you and you're looking at the total pipeline and it says, you know,$2 million projected for Q3 of 2026. And the overconfident leader is going to their next leader and saying, hey, it's going to be$3 million when there is self-awareness there. So reality hits, they go, hey, I want some help here. I want to figure this out. I don't want this to be my future of projecting$3 million is never going to close.

4:44Jessica Stokes: And they start to do some digging into what's happening. Typically, that's when SalesGravy gets a call. What are they seeing as the problem versus what when we walk into the door, what are we having an honest conversation with them about?

4:55Jeb Blount Jr.: I think the thing that stands out the most here is that they don't recognize the problem in not having a true micro commitment. So sales leaders and salespeople look at that pipeline and say, well, this customer needs a little more time to think about it. Like it's still going to advance. They just need a little more time. Or they're looking at things where the customer said, hey, circle back around with me at the end of the month. By then I'll get to review it with my team and get an answer back to you. And so when leaders and salespeople are looking at pipelines, but there's no firm calendar commitment, that's where we are kind of living in that world of hope and not reality.

5:35Jeb Blount Jr.: And so those deals that don't have something on the calendar, they are much, much harder and riskier to close.

5:41Jessica Stokes: I have a client that I coach and we just had this exact scenario. We looked into the pipeline, you can see on the board where the deals were. And all of the deals for this particular rep were on the very front end of the pipeline, very first stage, first time appointment or, you know, somewhere in like the early discovery setting. And they had all red marks or yellow marks like the caution symbols that indicated that there were no firm next steps or that there had been no activity on that deal in weeks or months. And I looked at that and my brain gave me red flags. What are the red flags that you get when you see a pipeline like that?

6:15Jeb Blount Jr.: The red flag is the deal is probably not going to close or it's going to ghost you or it's going to stall out. So there's this mindset that I think high performing sales teams have, which is if there's no next step, there is no deal. When you live by that mindset, if there is no next step, there is no deal. Then what it does is it changes sometimes the behaviors of salespeople to think, OK, if I don't have a next step. And let me also just be clear here. A next step is when we are both on each other's calendars. The next step is not me putting a task to remember to email them in three weeks. It's something on both of our calendars.

6:52Jessica Stokes: We've got the qualification that's on both people's calendars. It's both been agreed to. You have a firm next step with them. We were talking about the kind of the branches, right? We've got this theme of breaking through buyer resistance at Outbound this year. Why do sales reps have resistance for micro commitments?

7:05Jeb Blount Jr.: The resistance on the salesperson side is typically because we hear things like, I don't want to annoy somebody like they were just generous enough to meet with me for 30 minutes and I conducted discovery. So I don't want to be too pushy. I don't want to overstep maybe my welcome by asking for a next step. I'd say that's the top piece of resistance that I deal with with people that I'm coaching and sales teams I'm working with is right away. Salespeople say that's just too pushy. Like I can't ask for anything more. And I think another piece of the salesperson's resistance sometimes is maybe the fear of getting the no.

7:40Jeb Blount Jr.: Because if you get to the end of the meeting and you're suggesting the next time we should talk again, you're kind of laying your cards on the table right here. Like you're saying, I want to work with you. I want to build this relationship. And there's vulnerability if somebody says, I don't like your product or I don't want to work with you or I don't see the value, right?

7:57Jessica Stokes: The fear of getting the no or overstaying our welcome. I want to ask you two separate questions on this. I think we both recognize that there's validity, but there's also a source for a lot of that fear. Where do you think most reps fear of that getting a no, seeking the resistance or overstaying their welcome really comes from? What's the source of that particular feeling?

8:17Jeb Blount Jr.: We talk about this a lot, you know, in objections and fanatical prospecting. I do think it does come back to that fight or flight, the amygdala kind of triggering that, you know, there is that chance that they're going to tell me no. And the fear then is if this deal is not advancing, my pipeline sucks, you know, because if I have to kill this one and I have to kill three others because they don't want to talk to me again, then I have my leader to talk to when they say, Jessica, where's your pipeline this month? Like there's one deal left. So I think salespeople would rather cling on to that hope, like, OK, maybe this one will close.

8:52Jeb Blount Jr.: And if I don't push with asking for a next step, then I have that unknown right there. Like it might still close even if they don't want to talk with me.

9:01Jessica Stokes: Why do you think people want to hold on to those deals and have that fear of having to go talk to the leader about their pipeline being empty if they have to kill these three deals? Like, where does that come from?

9:10Jeb Blount Jr.: They just want a fuller than full pipeline. Like I feel good if I'm like number three on the forecast pipeline, then number 10. And if I know that I'm really getting good at my next steps, my pipeline will be healthier because it'll be more forecastable for leadership. But that's also owning that I probably need to do more prospecting because if not everybody wants to advance with me. And a lot of salespeople, when I ask this question, when we talk about micro commitments and we're doing role plays and trainings around this topic, I ask salespeople, you know, would you rather know the real status of a deal?

9:45Jeb Blount Jr.: Like if they're not going to buy from you, wouldn't you rather know that? And I will share with you that probably nine out of 10 salespeople say I'd rather hear the no. I'd rather not just be like living in like the clouds of, oh, yeah, they're going to buy from me. Because even myself as a salesperson, you know, there's been times over the years where you just kind of have that sense. You just kind of got it that the discovery call didn't go well. Maybe I didn't feel I had enough value. And at the end of the day, it is, you know, me versus an incumbent vendor. It's apples to apples ish. You know, I don't really feel I had a personal connection.

10:17Jeb Blount Jr.: And sometimes you step away from those. And, you know, sometimes I think when a deal probably won't advance. But when you don't ask for the next step, it's like you're putting off the inevitable.

10:27Jessica Stokes: The prospecting problem, it crops up over and over and over again. You know, what's interesting is intellectually, like I kind of led you down that path to have a touchstone on, you know, especially at Outbound, we're going to talk about the mindset and what it takes to be a fanatical prospector and how you can execute it and messaging and all of these things. But the emotions around it, like you mentioned, we train a lot of the prospecting objections and really a lot of objections overall. And it really comes down to like the amygdala. Like you are just a human being. The challenge is when you have the fear of an empty pipeline and you don't have things behind it, it makes it really difficult to override those systems.

10:59Jessica Stokes: Right.

10:59Jeb Blount Jr.: Oh, absolutely. Going back to kind of this topic of, you know, the next step and the amygdala is if you have a nice solid pipeline, like you've already hit your quota for the quarter or whatever that might be. That's where salespeople are also more comfortable to lay those cards on the table to say, you know, at the end of the day, I don't need this deal to close. So now that confidence in learning a skill like this, it just kind of surfaces because it's like if you tell me no, sometimes that no starts a conversation. Not every no is a deal killer.

11:27Jessica Stokes: Sometimes no is a no for now. And they really mean no for now because things happen. But maybe your buyer didn't want to go through the same emotions. They didn't want to have to feel like they were letting somebody down. And then if you call them or if you do set the next step or you have the effort to go find that resistance, sometimes they're like, it's no, but I want to work with you. And I get that actually a lot. I get no, but I want to work with you a lot. And then they turn to the customers later on. I want to go to leadership. What we're talking about is the resistance that sellers have to gaining micro commitments and seeking that rejection potentially, or seeking the no when they have deals in their pipeline.

12:01Jessica Stokes: And in a lot of cases, it's driven by, you know, a lack of pipeline. So they don't have a lot of pipeline. They need to go prospect more, but more so it's driven by human emotions and disruptive emotions. Maybe you're a salesperson. Let's go next to salesperson real quickly. How would you, if you're the person who's listening to this podcast and you're coming to outbound and you know, your pipeline is a little inflated and you know that you probably aren't as good at the pipeline. You're not bad at it, but you're not as good at the pipeline management as you could be. You can feel these emotions.

12:26Jessica Stokes: Like when we talk about, I think of it like you've got molding clay in some of these deals and then the clay dries up, it starts to crumble away. And no matter how much you put it back together, it's never going to stick. How would you start to turn this around as a sales rep? And then we'll go talk about what leaders can do from a coaching and mentorship perspective.

12:42Jeb Blount Jr.: I would say the first thing you could probably do as soon as this episode ends is literally pick up the phone. Like just call that opportunity, not email, you know, just pick up the phone and call them and find out what the status is. If you've been waiting on them to meet with the board or make a decision behind closed doors that you can't be a part of and it's been two, three, four weeks, whatever, it doesn't hurt to pick up the phone and just ask what is going on. Should we discuss next steps? Do you have any questions or whatever that might be? One thing I encourage salespeople to consider too is what's referred to as the assumptive calendar.

13:15Jessica Stokes: You were talking about this right before the show. Dive into this assumptive calendar.

13:18Jeb Blount Jr.: This is where you can just send that calendar invite. Now, remember, guys, we're talking about people in your pipeline. So this is not going to a cold stranger danger. Don't just start like hitting, you know, prospecting with calendar invites. So this is someone who's already met with you, spoke with you, been on Zoom meetings, maybe even has your proposal. Like there is already a relationship here. So with the assumptive, you look for a window of time, you know, a week or so from now. And you put a 15 minute telephone call invite on the person's calendar. Don't assumptively force them to show up for an in-person meeting and don't assumptively assume they should log into a Teams or a Zoom call.

13:52Jeb Blount Jr.: So I like it a phone call. And what I do is I will send it to you on the time and date that works for me. And there's a soft note in the calendar invite. So it might say something like, hey, Jeb, I wanted to call you next week to find out the status of, you know, wherever you are your pipeline. Let me know if this time on Thursday that I'd like to call you does not work on your side. So it's almost like giving them the out, but you're just taking the reins, if you will, and saying, I want to call you next week. I'm warning you that I'm going to call you. And what I experienced when I'm encouraging sales reps to do this all the time, someone will text me or email afterwards and say, Jessica, you're never going to believe they accepted the invite.

14:31Jeb Blount Jr.: And sometimes they accept it and they say, I'm so sorry. I know I owed you an update.

14:36Jessica Stokes: Yeah, I get that one a lot. And I love this practice. And I actually don't do your exact practice on this. We were talking about our different approaches right before the show. But the way you've kind of laid it out for me has sold me on it. I really like that when you have that conversation with somebody almost, I would say like 60 to 70 % of the time, it's not every single time, but it's pretty close that you get, hey, I'm so sorry, you know, things got away from me, their life gets busy, things happen. And you know, you're a salesperson, you're one of 150 salespeople that's probably talking to any given number of prospects at any given time.

15:08Jessica Stokes: I've learned to take it a little bit less personally, but most people are like, they take it personally. They're like, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do this to you. As long as you're nice and professional and persistent and smile and walk in the door with like a genuine heart, like people generally treat you pretty well.

15:21Jeb Blount Jr.: I totally agree. So a couple of moments ago, we were talking about like the fear that the salesperson has. And until you start doing this and finding out that this is not as difficult as it seems in your mind. Asking for the next step or trying to uninstall with the phone call or the assumptive. And once you do it two or three times and you're like, that wasn't even that bad. Like somebody actually apologized to me. They said, oh my gosh, Jessica, I meant to get back to you. I saw your email last week. I saw whatever. And sometimes in that apology, sometimes we do get bad news, right? I mean, sometimes they say, hey, we decided to go with the other vendor.

15:57Jeb Blount Jr.: We did whatever.

15:57Jessica Stokes: I've gotten all kinds of crazy things. And it's not crazy because you know what? If I look back at the things I did, I probably was and you're not a cup of tea for every single human being. Exactly.

16:05Jeb Blount Jr.: And so you may either learn something about your sales process. You know, you might learn that they said, hey, you look just like the other guy. Well, maybe I didn't stand out enough. That's not the customer's problem. That's mine. And that's something I can maybe work on. Sometimes it's beyond my control when somebody says, hey, I meant to get back to you, but something happened internally. And this training for the team is like it's in the backseat for at least six months, reach back out to his end. But there's something about having that person respond to you that proves that you built the emotional connection, that they owed it to you to at least respond.

16:34Jeb Blount Jr.: And on the flip side, you guys listening right now, a bunch of you are going to be shocked when you actually get yeses. When people say, thank you for following up on this. Your ears must have been ringing. You read my mind. I was just thinking.

16:46Jessica Stokes: So many times they're like, I was thinking about this this morning. We all have things that like, you know, you really should be getting to at some point, but there's other things that are prioritized. But you think about it in the morning when you get up and then you get home from work and you're like, I really should have said something to, you know, X, Y, or Z person. and then you call them, they're like, thank you, you did the work for me. Going into a follow-up call, I want every important note right at my fingertips, not buried somewhere in a scribbled stack of notes. And with Plod Notepin S, I always have them because it's a wearable, portable note taker that lets me stay present and focused on customers during every single meeting.

17:19Jessica Stokes: Plod captures the conversation and turns it into organized summaries and action items so I can follow up faster. And if I need a specific detail, Plod's recall has that ready for me. And that's why Jeb Senior and I and all of Sales Gravy trusts our Plod Notepin S. Try Plod and stay focused on the conversation while it handles all of your notes. Go to plod.ai forward slash Jeb. That's plod.ai forward slash Jeb and use code JEB to get 10 % off your purchase.

17:46Jeb Blount Jr.: Exactly.

17:47Jessica Stokes: It's easy. I also want to point out here that, you know, from my experience, you're talking about this advancing, getting micro commitments, seeking out that rejection. Sometimes you'll find that you run with a leaner pipeline. It's not for everybody. I'm not necessarily always prescribing people run with a leaner pipeline. I like to have a bigger pipeline myself. But when I was in the field and I was working on this team, we had 12 people in this team and I was the number one seller on this team for a year. It was shocking at the beginning. The rest of my team had these pipelines that were like really big and it made me feel really inadequate.

18:16Jessica Stokes: I thought, oh my gosh, I'm not really doing enough. But I would run with a pretty lean pipeline because I was qualifying things and getting those commitments. And my manager, she would come to me in the first like four months, like the first quarter and a half or so of like when I was really selling for this business. And she would go, you got to get your pipeline up, got to get your pipeline up, she got to get your pipeline up. And I could hear her and I was like, I know, I know, I know. But things would just fall out because it was a month over month sale, like quota reset every month. And these things would just change.

18:42Jessica Stokes: People would fall out, they would say no to me, they would just ghost me or whatever would happen. But I had like seven or eight deals that were always in my pipeline, always strong. After a year, she never talked to me. She was like, I knew that you had the right system. I knew you had the commitments that were going to get you to a sale. And if you're operating with Jess's system, what you're going to find is you might operate leaner, but it's going to be so much more streamlined.

19:04Jeb Blount Jr.: Absolutely. And so I'm actually really glad that you shared that story because I think there's a lot of people who relate to that, that maybe my pipeline doesn't look as big and juicy as other people on the team. But what I see sometimes is really looking closer at those jumbo pipelines. sometimes they are a little fluffy and sometimes their close dates and stuff are not accurate. And even that boils back often to what's the next activity on the calendar. And so people will say, you know, I have a million dollar pipeline right now for the second half of the year. But is that really true, closable business that's tagging along with you on the journey of the sales process?

19:43Jessica Stokes: Do you have a thumb on the pulse of all of those deals and you know that you're going to lose 30 percent of them? So really, you have like a$750 ,000 pipeline. My bet is that what you observe is that people say million and they really mean 250.

19:55Jeb Blount Jr.: Yes, I was actually working with a client earlier this year. And when I kind of stepped into the picture, it was already five months into the year. And there were some members of the team who, you know, felt they didn't have maybe a strong pipeline. There were others who were like, oh, my pipeline is super full. But, you know, one of the first things we did together was exactly what we're talking about today. And we said, let's go through those pipelines and let's find out how real these deals are. They did not like me, I am sure, the first two or three weeks where I'm like, if you don't get a next step in the next week or so, we might have to kill this deal.

20:26Jeb Blount Jr.: Because if somebody doesn't want to talk to you, why do you expect they're going to sign a contract? Like, I don't want to talk to you again, but I'm still going to spend a million dollars.

20:33Jessica Stokes: It's not even real clutter because they're not even talking to you. It's just mental clutter.

20:37Jeb Blount Jr.: Those pipelines, a lot of them got tanked pretty quickly when I said, let's pick up the phone and call. And then they found out this buyer had already made the purchase with the competitor or they did the assumptive invite and it got declined because of X, Y or Z. Now, not everything died. So I don't want to scare people listening, saying if I do this, you know, I'm going to have one deal out of 30 in my pipeline. Although if that is the case, you need to know that and your leadership needs to see that because you probably need to do more prospecting or figure out what's going on in the sales process that you're not you're missing something in a discovery or you're missing something somewhere.

21:12Jessica Stokes: Delusion and success are very difficult to marry together. Let's talk about leaders really quickly about this challenge because it kind of segues really well into what you're about to talk about. You walk into businesses, you help people clean up their pipelines. I would argue that if you are taking out 75 % of your pipeline because someone's reviewing it, you can't lose what you didn't have. The pipelines didn't tank. It was already tanked. It just wasn't there. So you're a leader. Maybe you're a VP of sales. Let's talk about it from a really high-level perspective. You're coming to outbound.

21:36Jessica Stokes: Maybe you're bringing your team. And this is a problem that somewhat resonates with you. Let's not call it leak stream, but it somewhat resonates with you. As a leader, how do you manage other leaders doing this? Maybe how do you coach reps on your team? If you're a VP of sales, it's got a direct hand in it. How do you start to help people, but know that you need to be firm because your business requires accuracy in the forecast? You can't hold people's hands and sing kubaya and make them feel good and kill their pipeline at the same time. It's difficult to do those three things. How would you go about handling this?

22:09Jeb Blount Jr.: I think the first thing is, you know, to your point, you can't just walk in like a tyrant. But I think it does start with maybe in your next team meeting, just touching on something like what you heard on this podcast. Like, you know, I watched the Sales Gravy podcast and they were talking about the importance of always having a next calendar step with our clients. And I'm just curious, like, how good are we at that? And you might start it with just like an open, almost brainstorming or dialogue or, you know, hey, why don't you guys start taking a look at that? So you might kind of ease in with this is a concept and it got me thinking and I think this is something we can do better.

22:43Jeb Blount Jr.: And then, you know, you're going to have some people who leave that meeting and they just hit the ground running. They take it seriously. They're like, you're making a good point. I want to think about that. I'm going to go tackle it. And there will always be those people who don't want to do it. I like to think about when you're looking at the pipeline together, regardless of the deal value, do we have something on the calendar? And so just weaving those conversations into your pipeline reviews, because, again, if it's not on the calendar, that win probability is really just not as solid as it could be.

23:14Jeb Blount Jr.: Looking at that in the pipeline reviews with your leadership, if you're a VP who has leaders reporting to you, and then encouraging that trickle-down effect. Maybe in your mind you're thinking 90 days from now or six months from now, this philosophy of everything has a next step. It can be instituted over time.

23:32Jessica Stokes: It's interesting how you frame this up as what you can weave into weekly meetings, your Monday morning kickoffs or however you do things like that in your business to these pipeline reviews you're going to do individually at the rep level, maybe even doing it with your managers. If you're a higher level manager, you know, when you're doing reviews with them about their pipeline, which is everybody else's pipeline, do they have firm next steps? Can they articulate what those next steps are? It's interesting you frame it up that way as not a skills development challenge. It's more of a cultural challenge.

23:58Jeb Blount Jr.: I think it's a little bit of both. But I would say in my experience, it's a bigger cultural challenge where you might have a few reps who are doing this. And it's probably the reps who are the top producers, regardless of the size of the pipeline, are the ones closing more business. But I do think this is more of a culture problem where if as a leader, if I'm not asking about it, it's not going to happen. You know, there's that phrase inspect what you expect. And so if I expect you to have a next step, well, if I'm not bringing it up in the pipeline reviews, then it's like, oh, well, she's not looking at that anymore.

24:30Jeb Blount Jr.: So it's OK if I slipped on a few. And that's not an important target or that's not an important metric. So this is a sales culture mindset shift for a lot of people.

24:41Jessica Stokes: From a leadership perspective, it's a cultural shift. You got to do a lot of work here. You can't just run in like a tyrant. You're going to be on stage at Outbound. This is you're going to be what you're talking about, micro commitments and pipeline. The theme of Outbound Conference 2026 is going to be breaking through buyer resistance. If you have an organization that's doing all of the things we just talked about, they're prospecting, they got their pipeline full, they're qualifying things in and out, they've got firm next steps, their culture is all right, and they're doing all the fundamental things correct.

25:06Jessica Stokes: They can still deal with buyer resistance. So what are you seeing out there? What are companies dealing with? How are they dealing with buyer resistance? What does buyer resistance look like? Just kind of give us maybe a quick synopsis of what you're seeing in the field.

25:18Jeb Blount Jr.: Two places when I think about buyer resistance and where it stems from. I would say in sales, number one, buyer resistance is stemming from the lack of discovery or value building. You know, anyone who's a Jeb Blunt fan, we know the five most important questions. So I think that's where buyer resistance can stem from often. If I didn't connect with you, didn't do diligent discovery, then the buyer is going to resist wanting to work with me or continue to work with me because they don't see the value. But I think the other piece of buyer resistance comes from the salesperson's side, meaning something like we're talking about today, asking for a next step.

25:54Jeb Blount Jr.: You didn't get buyer resistance because you didn't ask for it. So there is that side of, you know, is the buyer really resisting advancing with you or is it the salesperson's resistance that is not advancing the deal?

26:08Jessica Stokes: Listening to you say this is what we were just talking about is salespeople's resistance to doing the right fundamental things.

26:16Jeb Blount Jr.: Can sometimes have people think it's buyer resistance where it's not. And so when we think about outbound and the event we're having, like, I think that on the outbound stage, when we're talking about micro commitments and breaking through buyer resistance, some of that we have to reflect and realize is actually our internal resistance, which can be perceived as buyer resistance.

26:36Jessica Stokes: If you break through buyer's resistance, if you break through your own resistance, it's great. You can control one of those things. We've got these two things at play, these two dynamics. You've been to Outbound before. You have been on the stage before. I believe you have attended most of our Outbound since, what, 2021?

26:50Jeb Blount Jr.: Actually, before. I was actually an Outbound audience member before I was a Sales Gravy employee. So I've attended a lot of Outbound.

26:58Jessica Stokes: For a leader who's never been. Someone who just happens upon the Sales Gravy podcast. They somehow made it this far in the conversation. They thought we were interesting enough. So there's a lot of qualifiers here. Why should they be interested? Why should they buy tickets? Why should they bring their team to outbound?

27:12Jeb Blount Jr.: You want to bring your team to outbound because you want to close more business. I mean, that's just the bottom line. If you have a sales quota, and especially if that quota is going to be going up from this year, you need to have representation at outbound. Whether you are running a large sales team, whether you're just running a team of two or three reps, it does not matter. We're going to have real actionable tools, takeaways, strategies that you can bring back to your organization and share with your team to help them close more deals next year.

27:41Jessica Stokes: Since you've been to so many, why is Outbound special? Like, why is it an event that you actually go to?

27:48Jeb Blount Jr.: There's something about the energy at Outbound. And, you know, you walk into this room just full of sales leaders and high performing salespeople. So not everybody coming to Outbound has this serious pipeline problem. Some people are there because they're already high performers, but they want to still step it up next year. You know, I'm already the top performing rep, but I want to be even bigger than that. You know, I still want to close an extra 200 percent to quota next year. But you're in a room of just people who get excited talking about sales, learning something new, sharing something new.

28:23Jeb Blount Jr.: And of course, you get to meet like some awesome people that you hear on the podcast or you write a book and you're like, oh, I can actually, you know, shake the hand of that person.

28:33Jessica Stokes: It's the weirdest thing. It's like going to Woodstock for sales speakers. When I was 18 years old, if you were at the Omni in Atlanta, you know, we got Mike Weinberg and Mark Hunter and Antean Arino and Jeb Blunt. And, you know, I'm like 18 years old. Like, these are, who are these people? What's crazy is that like nine years later, I think I've seen more sales speakers than almost anybody else in the world. And it's truly a place where you can shake their hands. I want to ask you some rapid fire questions. These are some fun ones. What are the three words that you would describe outbound?

29:02Jeb Blount Jr.: I would definitely say fun, motivational. So you leave, you're fired up, your notebook's going to be loaded of best practice tips. And I'm going to say transformational, because if you actually look at that notebook that you filled up the whole week at Outbound and then you take it back to your sales pipeline or to your team, it truly can transform the trajectory of your guys' organization.

29:25Jessica Stokes: I want to ask you this follow-up question, which is if you could tell an attendee to bring one thing that is not a notebook to Outbound Conference, what would that one thing be?

29:33Jeb Blount Jr.: I want you to bring three specific questions that you have. And this is why. So at Outbound, the speakers oftentimes, you know, we have like open mic kind of time where you can say, but what are three things that you have questions about, three things you want to gain from Outbound? Because if you're asking it, whether it's to somebody who's on a stage or even collaborating with other people in the line at the buffet, you know, like, how are you handling this challenge? So bring three questions of where you want to improve next year.

30:06Jessica Stokes: I think that's really, really, really important. I actually want to highlight that. If you are listening to this and you're coming to Outbound and you want to ask questions to the people on the stage or to people out in the lobby, or you want to have conversations with other folks, but especially if you want to walk up to the microphone and get real answers from our speakers, have your questions written out, ready to go. It will make it a lot easier for you than trying to get up in front of there and trying to like, you know, make up something and try and get through all the words in the right way and ask it the right way.

30:31Jessica Stokes: I just know that the people who write down their questions see a lot more success. Complete the sentence. You belong at Outbound if you're tired of not hitting quota. I love that. Come to Outbound if you're tired of not being the best that you can be. If you're tired of missing quota, you should definitely be at Outbound. But if you're the top performer who's like wants to hit 200 percent.

30:51Jeb Blount Jr.: Although sometimes those top performers might be missing their personal quota.

30:54Jessica Stokes: Oh, true.

30:54Jeb Blount Jr.: You know what I mean? So if it's like, OK, I set myself a quota.

30:58Jessica Stokes: Different kind of quotas. Yeah. Different kind of quotas. I like that. What? is your pump-up song?

31:04Jeb Blount Jr.: I'm going to go Thunderstruck by ACDC.

31:07Jessica Stokes: Will in our booth had a Thunderstruck yesterday. I was getting ready for a podcast. I love that. That was a great pump-up song. What's your sales spirit animal?

31:15Jeb Blount Jr.: I'm going to go with the frog. Anyone who's been in my sessions, anyone who's worked with me before, time discipline is something that I'm a big fan of, and I think I do fairly well. And so that eat the frog mindset, although I don't know if then I want to be the spirit animal because that's saying I'm eating my buddy, the frog. I'm going to stick with frog. I'm going to stick with frog. You're going to get doubled down on the frog.

31:36Jessica Stokes: Okay. We're going to go to the beautiful Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, November 9th through the 12th. Again, go get your tickets at outboundconference.com. It is going to be off strip. So we're going to spend some time away from like the Bellagio and in the downtown area. When you get there, what is the first thing you're going to do when you get to the resort?

31:52Jeb Blount Jr.: Oh, the first thing I do when I get to a resort. Well, probably for me, it'll be getting ready for the welcome VIP happy hour on Monday night. But outside of like the work related answer, probably find out where I can get like a great meal while I'm in town. I love Las Vegas. People are like love, hate sometimes in Vegas. Haven't been out there in a couple of years. So there's always a new restaurant by like a celebrity chef or something that you haven't checked out yet. So I'm going to be looking for some cool spots to eat.

32:16Jessica Stokes: I think that'll be fun. And because we are away from the strip, there might be options that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to go check out. If you could challenge any of our outbound speakers, anybody else on the roster, to a bowling match at the VIP event, who would it be?

32:31Jeb Blount Jr.: Oh, a bowling match. Interesting. I'm going to go with Jeb Blunt. Why not? I mean, if you're going to go big or go home, if you're going to challenge somebody, might as well challenge the man, the myth, the legend himself. And I don't know how he bowls. So could I take him down?

32:46Jessica Stokes: Didn't we do some bowling at our Pinnacle Club trip many years ago or a couple years ago, maybe? I think he won.

32:51Jeb Blount Jr.: Oh, great.

32:52Jessica Stokes: Actually, you know what?

32:53Jeb Blount Jr.: Can I take back the challenge?

32:55Jessica Stokes: There is another ringer, though, in the crew. I think you had double down like the frog. You got a bull jab. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being in the studio with us. Joining us at Outbound, Jessica Stokes, go follow her on LinkedIn. Go follow her on Sales Gravy. She has articles. She's got podcasts. Her Money Mondays are incredible on our podcast. Go check those out. And if you aren't on Sales Gravy University, she's like the queen of Sales Gravy University. So go check those out. But thank you so much for being here. and then go to outboundconference.com. Literally right now, stop listening and go to outboundconference.com and we will catch you next time on the Sales Gravy Podcast.

33:24Thank you.

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