May 6, 2025 • 16 mins
Tyler Goss, from Tampa, has two critical sales questions: 1) How do we achieve those "crazy" prospecting numbers I talk about in my books? 2) When should a lead become a pipeline opportunity?
In this podcast, I break down these answers in plain English.
When to Create a Deal: Finding the Sweet Spot
There's no shortage of opinions on when to create a deal in your CRM. Some sales leaders will tell you to create a deal before you even make the first call (ridiculous). Others won't let you create one until the contract is practically signed (equally absurd).
Here's my take: Both extremes are problematic. You need a pipeline that gives you meaningful data. Here's how we handle this at Sales Gravy:
For Inbound Leads:
We categorize inbound leads into three distinct groups:
1. List Leads
These are people who sign up for our newsletter or download basic resources where we only ask for a name and email address. They're joining our community, and while some might become customers down the road, they're not pipeline opportunities yet.
2. MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads)
These folks have given us more detailed information through webinars or content downloads. They've provided their phone number, email address, company, role, etc. There's an implicit understanding that we might reach out, but they haven't expressed a direct interest in buying. I don't want these in my pipeline just yet.
3. Hot Leads
These people come to us with their hands up, saying things like: "We've got a team of nine and want to do sales training" or "Our SKO is in February, and we want to hire Jeb. How much does he cost?" These leads have an open buying window and go straight into the pipeline. We'll close 95% of these because they've already self-identified as buyers.
For Outbound Prospecting:
When prospecting outbound we only put opportunities into the pipeline after the prospect has agreed to a first-time appointment (FTA).
Here's why: First-time appointments are your Money Ball metric—they indicate the health of your prospecting efforts. When an FTA is in your pipeline, you can measure critical data points like:
Show/no-show rates by rep
Advancement rates from FTA to next stages
Conversion rates from FTA to closed business
If I have a rep setting tons of FTAs with only a 10% show rate, I need to diagnose that problem. If another rep is advancing 50% of their FTAs to the next stage, that tells me something completely different.
The qualification point is simple: Both parties have agreed to step into the sales process. That's when it becomes a pipeline opportunity.
Some organizations resist this approach because they only want "fully qualified" opportunities in their pipeline. I get it, but you're missing valuable data if you wait too long.
Consider this example: If you work in an industry where everyone's under contract, and you know contract expiration dates, you might be tempted to automatically add prospects to your pipeline as their contract end dates approach. I wouldn't do that. Wait until you've had a conversation where they agree to meet with you to discuss options. That agreement to step into the process is your trigger.
If you're putting everything into your pipeline, you're diluting your data. If you're waiting until deals are practically closed, why even have a pipeline? The sweet spot is somewhere in between—and for most B2B sales organizations, it's at the first-time appointment stage.
Maximizing Prospecting Efficiency: How We Make So Many Calls
Tyler also asked about those "crazy" prospecting numbers I mention in my books. How do my teams make hundreds of calls during designated call blocks? The answer boils down to three key principles:
1. Separate List Building from Prospecting
Research and building lists is NOT prospecting. When we're prospecting, we're just chopping wood. We have our lists ready in advance, and when it's time to prospect, that's all we do.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
This is the Sales Gravy Podcast. Hi. I'm
Jeb Blunt, best selling author of fanatical prospecting
Objection, Sales EQ, and Inked, and I'm here
to help you open more doors, close bigger
deals, and rock your commission check.
(00:26):
It's a wisdom Wednesday where you drive the
agenda. And on this segment of the Sales
Gravy Podcast, you bring us your biggest questions,
and Jet Blunt senior gives you his best
answers.
And these answers, they come straight from the
trenches because just like you, we are out
here every single day prospecting,
selling, leading, and driving results.
Now before we dive in, this is a
(00:47):
quick heads up. We'll be announcing the dates
and location for the next outbound conference very,
very soon. And outbound is the biggest and
baddest sales conference on the planet. If you've
never been, this is the one you want
to put on your bucket list. Seats are
limited, and we always
sell out. So
get on the early bird wait list now
at outboundconference.com.
(01:09):
That's outboundconference.com.
Alright. Let's go. Because next up is Tyler
Goss from Tampa Bay, Florida.
You know, when you spend a lot of
time prospecting, you naturally in in an ideal
scenario, you're gonna end up with a lot
more opportunities.
But I wanted to know if you had
any sort of, like, anecdotal rule or a
(01:30):
thought process around when to really create a
deal. Some people are like, Hassett, before you
even make the call, you're calling them. That's
an opportunity.
Other people are like, they have to have
a contract in hand. So I just was
curious what your thoughts are on that. That's
a great question. Let's just break this down.
There's all kinds of of opinions on this.
You're right. And some of the opinions drive
me out of my mind.
So I'll walk into a business, and they'll
(01:51):
talk about their pipeline, and I'll do a
pipeline review.
And almost nothing in the pipeline is real.
Like, it's not even
qualified. There are some organizations that take it
all the way to an extreme where the
only thing we put in the pipeline is
something that we're almost guaranteed to close. And
neither one of those are a really good
strategy or tactic because it doesn't give you
(02:13):
the data that you need. I really want
a good pipeline that if I walk all
through all the steps of the pipeline, some
deals are gonna fall out, some deals are
gonna close. I'm gonna be able to analyze
my closed lost deals. I'll be able to
analyze my closed won deals, and I'll be
able to see where I've got problems in
the pipe.
So I give you my take on this.
Okay? So let's take an inbound lead first.
(02:34):
We get different levels of inbound leads at
Sales Gravy. We get inbound leads that we
call list leads. That's a person who comes
in and they wanna be a part of
our newsletter,
or they download
one of our resources where the only thing
we ask for is their first name and
their email address. Well, those are list leads.
What I mean by list is those are
people who end up on
a our newsletter list or we send them
(02:55):
an announcement for a podcast. So we're just
creating a community with them. Some of those
people end up being hot leads down the
road. Some of them just consume our content.
Some of them buy a book along the
way, but we're just creating a relationship with
those individuals.
I don't want any of that in my
pipeline. That's not a pipeline opportunity.
The next level we have would be MQLs
(03:15):
or marketing qualified leads. These are leads that'll
come in through
a webinar or a download,
and we've asked for a lot of information.
And people understand it at this point in
time that when you're giving us all that
information, there's a price to pay to get
the download. And that is the the your
phone number, your email address,
where you work, your role. And there's an
(03:36):
expectation that at some point, we're going to
reach out to you to have a conversation
about whether or not you should move into
our pipeline.
I don't want those in my pipeline. That's
not a person saying that I'm ready to
buy. That's just a person saying, I've downloaded
this. Here's my information.
And then it's up to us to be
able to engage them in a conversation through
prospecting or a phone call or an email
(03:58):
or however we we communicate with them to
to get them qualified to see whether or
not they need to move.
The third group of people that come in
are people who have an open buying window,
and those are our hot leads. And we
know exactly what forms they come in on.
We know exactly what language people are using.
In those situations,
my ask to the salesperson is create
(04:18):
a deal the moment that comes in
because we're gonna close 95%
of those people who come in, we're gonna
close them. Because they came in with their
hand up. They're they're it sounds like this.
We've got a team of nine. We wanna
do a sales training program. We need to
talk to somebody.
When people come at us like that, we're
gonna win the deal. They come in like
(04:39):
this. They go, we've got our SKO coming
up in February. It's gonna be in Las
Vegas. We wanna hire Jeb. How much does
he cost? Like, that's a deal. That's inbound,
and that's how I look at inbound. So
two groups of inbound, I don't wanna anywhere
close to my pipeline. The other one I
want it because I know that the buying
window is open.
But if we take that to
(05:00):
deals that you're prospecting or people you're prospecting.
So, Tyler, you get a list of MQLs.
So we know who they are. Or you
pull a list off, say, Zoom info, and
you've got a list of people you're gonna
call into, and you call in let's say
you call me, and we have a quick
conversation,
and I agree to meet with you. Right?
So you call in and say, I think
Jessica taught you how to set an appointment
(05:21):
because blah blah blah. And I go, yeah.
I'll meet with you on Thursday.
At that point, like, this is where your
company is gonna have to make a decision.
If I've got a FTA schedule, do I
put it in the pipeline at that moment
at the FTA stage,
or do I wait until I meet with
them and qualify it for the next step?
I think you have to, as an organization,
kinda think through what that looks like. For
(05:44):
me, I want it in the pipe at
the FTA. You book the meeting with them,
put it in the pipe. Because if it's
in the pipe, now I'm able to judge
the show and no show rate. And I
can do that on a per rep basis.
So if I've got a rep who's setting
all kinds of FTAs, but their show rate's
only 10%,
I'm able to at least go back and
diagnose I've got a problem.
(06:04):
If I've got a rep who is putting
FTAs in and closing those FTAs or advancing
those FTAs to the next step at a
rate of 50%,
then I may be healthy or maybe I
need to go listen to the FTAs and
see how they're doing with those to advance
them forward. And if you go into our
our pipeline, you would see that we have
a step that's just FTA. I've booked an
FTA.
At that point, I've either booked a discovery
(06:26):
call next or I haven't. Or in some
cases,
if it's a hot lead, I have one
conversation with them and I close the deal,
so I move them forward on a one
call close. Somewhere in there, we're gonna advance.
And the reason that I like FTAs is
because
that's essentially my money ball or my key
metric for the health of a salesperson is
how many first time appointments are you booking
(06:48):
every single day or every single week. Most
business to business reps need to have about
two. And what I mean by that is
qualified. Right? The qualification is that you've got
all their information,
and they've agreed to step into your process.
So if I call you and have a
conversation
and you agree
to meet with me, then we've both agreed
to move into the process. Now we may
(07:08):
conduct the FTA
and not move it forward. We may go
ahead and close loss it right there on
the spot. That's fine.
Some organizations don't wanna do that because the
of the way they're managing their metrics, they
go, well, we don't wanna put in something
that is kind of maybe they'll show up,
maybe they won't show up. And we don't
wanna put something in where we haven't fully
qualified it because in a lot of cases,
you may be doing the rest of the
(07:29):
qualification in the FTA.
So we don't want it in there until.
And I understand that, and I get that.
If you're, like, super measuring or super crazy
about your close lost against your close won,
I just feel like FTA is where I
wanna begin
because of the way that I see FTAs
as the healthy measure of, am I getting
(07:50):
on base? So am I getting opportunities?
I think that somewhere in the middle of
that, you're gonna find a place that makes
sense. But I would tell you, if you're
waiting all the way until it's a sure
deal and you're putting in there, you're getting
no data from it, why do you even
have a pipeline? Right? And if you're putting
everything in, like, you're calling everything a pipeline
opportunity,
you're diluting any opportunity to measure
(08:13):
anything meaningful that will help you coach and
advance your sales organization.
Okay.
So identify that point of buy in. Basically,
identify an actual SQL and then create you
there. Okay. So for me, like, that that
qualification point is the point where both of
us agree to step into the sales process.
Right. Okay. I'll give you an example of
(08:33):
one where if you just looked at buying
windows. Right? Let's just say that you work
in a industry where almost everybody's under contract,
and we can identify contract x dates. You
could legitimately say, we're gonna take every
prospect in our database that has an identified
and confirmed contract x date. And when it
(08:54):
hits a certain point, it hits the pipeline.
You could do that.
I wouldn't do that because
even though we know there's there's a buying
window open, if the if the contract x
date's coming up, the buying window's open because
the person has to make a decision. They
either keep doing what they're doing,
they quit doing it altogether, or they get
another vendor to do it. Either one of
those things, they have to make a decision
(09:14):
because there's a point in time when that
contract's going to come up for a renewal,
and they have to do something.
But I wouldn't put it into the pipeline
until I've called them
and said, Tyler, your contract with x company
is coming up for renewal.
I wanna set a meeting with you because
it'll give you some different options so that
as you're making a decision, it'll give you
(09:36):
an apples to apples comparison,
and that makes it easier for you to
do business and and make better decisions for
your business. And you go, that sounds good.
Come over on Thursday. Boom. It's in the
pipe. Because at that point, there's a buying
window open that we've identified, and you and
I both agreed to step into the process.
That's how I look at that. Okay. Awesome.
That was great. Thank you.
(09:57):
In your book, I'm I'm gonna forget the
exact numbers here, but there's a moment where
you're talking about the call blocks that you
initiate, whether it's for when you're consulting or
it's your own team. And the numbers are
amazing. And if I'm remembering correctly, it's two
designated call blocks and something like hundreds plus
of calls during those block.
Naturally, when we talk about this with our
team members, there's a lot of excuses, many
(10:19):
of which can be resolved pretty quickly.
When you get past the motivational excuses, there
is a fairly valid argument that comes up,
which is the time dedicated to lead building
and then, of course, the process of actually
dialing.
The question here is, a, have you figured
out a solution for efficiency in that call
block?
And b, is the answer just like an
(10:39):
auto dialer or some software? Here's number one
thing for efficiency.
Researching
and building a list is not prospecting.
So the way we get that done is
that when we're prospecting, we're prospecting. We're just
chopping wood.
So, yeah, you can you can use an
autodialer. We don't use an autodialer, but you
can use an autodialer. I guess we do
use one because in HubSpot, they just click
(11:00):
the phone number and move to the next
thing. It's really hard for me when I
get those calls from salespeople and there's that
moment of silence.
Like, that that just kills the call. But
we just click the button. Click you know,
just click the number and move to the
next one. But you gotta have the list
ready in advance. If you've got that in
your cadence,
then you know, like, this list on this
particular day, every one of these is a
(11:21):
phone call. Next day, every one of these
is an email. So the next day, every
one of these is, LinkedIn.
So I would start there. The other thing
that we do is and you experience this
in canonical prospecting boot camp. You experience the
call blocks. Right? So we have these high
intensity prospecting sprints.
And if you think about it, if I
said you got fifteen minutes to make $15
(11:41):
at one appointment, most salespeople are gonna make
at least 10. Think about that. If you
run four of those, you've made 40
calls at a minimum.
Now that doesn't mean that if you get
someone on the phone, you have a long
conversation,
you won't make 10. That's okay. But the
whole idea is it gets FTAs have conversations.
So that's you're not always gonna hit that
number, but that's 40.
(12:03):
Think about that. We're just saying we're making
a hundred before noon. If you do forty
and forty and forty, you made a 20
in three hours. This isn't something that's a
theory.
We're running these these events for our clients
all over the country. We we get their
sales teams in a room, and they're stunned.
Like, they're literally stunned that you can make
that many calls.
But all we're doing is setting the conditions
(12:25):
to do that because what most salespeople do
is they come in the morning, and then
they got their computer on and chats up
and, you know, they've got this going on,
and then they get something from TikTok and
they're watching a cat video.
And you you sit with them and they're
taking, like, twelve minutes between every dial. And,
of course, they're not getting anything done. And
then they look at you and go, how
is it possible for me to do any
of this work? I can't get anything done.
(12:45):
So when you set the conditions,
then you're able to change that. So we
don't research while we prospect. We get our
list together, and then we prospect the list.
And when we prospect the list, we prospect
the list. If it's a bad list, it's
a bad list. If it's a good list,
it's a good list. But we know that
the law of averages are on our in
our favor if we just do this every
single day.
Now most business to business salespeople
(13:07):
don't need to make that many dials. Most
business to business salespeople, if you had one
full hour every day of solid prospecting,
they're gonna be good. They're gonna have all
of the meetings that they need to set.
My executive assistant
did cold calls yesterday.
So she's having to fill up the next
Fanatical Prospecting Boot Camp. So think about this.
She made 10 cold calls yesterday,
(13:29):
cold. I mean,
freezing
cold. She had a 30% pickup rate. She
talked to three people.
She spent I heard I I asked her
this morning what her time investment was. She
spent about twenty minutes doing it, which is
you'd imagine, like, she's never made cold calls
before. It's the first time she's ever done
it. So she was up with our sales
team and decided she was gonna do it.
So she could be faster.
(13:50):
Think about that.
Yeah. With her, she has made 10 a
day. I'm happy because 10 a day is
50 a week. 50 a week, you start
adding the numbers up. It gets big. So
that's how you do that. My point with
the extraordinary numbers is is that
everybody's capable of doing it if they just
decide to do it. Most people don't decide
to do it.
(14:10):
Yeah. Yeah. The mindset shift. Yep. Awesome. Thank
you.
Tyler's question was one that we hear all
the time.
When should I create a deal in the
pipeline?
It might seem simple, but the answer reveals
everything about how you run your sales process
and whether you're managing data or just clinging
(14:31):
to hope.
Here's the truth. If your pipeline is full
of fluff with unqualified deals, wishful thinking opportunities,
you're not coaching your team. You're managing fiction.
On the other hand, if you wait until
a deal is almost closed to log it,
you're missing critical data that helps you spot
early problems, track activity, and forecast accurately. The
(14:51):
key is to identify the moment when the
true mutual buy in happens when both the
prospect and the seller agree to step into
the real sales process. For us, that's the
moment called the FTA,
the first time appointment. It's the most reliable
metric for pipeline health and rep productivity.
If you're setting FTAs, you are creating movement,
and movement in sales creates results. So here's
(15:14):
your takeaway. Don't create deals based on gut
feelings, and don't wait until contracts are drafted.
Set clear internal rules. Once the FTA is
booked with a qualified buyer, boom,
it's in the pipe. That way, you're tracking
reps, measuring conversion, and coaching real behavior. And
if you're out there managing your own book
(15:34):
of business, remember, the health of your pipeline
starts with discipline.
Get clear about what qualifies,
stick to it, and hold yourself accountable. This
is Jeb Blunt Junior, and thank you so
much for listening to this segment of the
Sales Gravy Podcast. If you wanna ask your
questions, go to salesGravy.com/ask.
That's salesgravy.com/ask.
This is the Sales Gravy Podcast. Hi. I'm
Jeb Blunt, best selling author of fanatical prospecting
Objection, Sales EQ, and Inked, and I'm here
to help you open more doors, close bigger
deals, and rock your commission check.
(00:26):
It's a wisdom Wednesday where you drive the
agenda. And on this segment of the Sales
Gravy Podcast, you bring us your biggest questions,
and Jet Blunt senior gives you his best
answers.
And these answers, they come straight from the
trenches because just like you, we are out
here every single day prospecting,
selling, leading, and driving results.
Now before we dive in, this is a
(00:47):
quick heads up. We'll be announcing the dates
and location for the next outbound conference very,
very soon. And outbound is the biggest and
baddest sales conference on the planet. If you've
never been, this is the one you want
to put on your bucket list. Seats are
limited, and we always
sell out. So
get on the early bird wait list now
at outboundconference.com.
(01:09):
That's outboundconference.com.
Alright. Let's go. Because next up is Tyler
Goss from Tampa Bay, Florida.
You know, when you spend a lot of
time prospecting, you naturally in in an ideal
scenario, you're gonna end up with a lot
more opportunities.
But I wanted to know if you had
any sort of, like, anecdotal rule or a
(01:30):
thought process around when to really create a
deal. Some people are like, Hassett, before you
even make the call, you're calling them. That's
an opportunity.
Other people are like, they have to have
a contract in hand. So I just was
curious what your thoughts are on that. That's
a great question. Let's just break this down.
There's all kinds of of opinions on this.
You're right. And some of the opinions drive
me out of my mind.
So I'll walk into a business, and they'll
(01:51):
talk about their pipeline, and I'll do a
pipeline review.
And almost nothing in the pipeline is real.
Like, it's not even
qualified. There are some organizations that take it
all the way to an extreme where the
only thing we put in the pipeline is
something that we're almost guaranteed to close. And
neither one of those are a really good
strategy or tactic because it doesn't give you
(02:13):
the data that you need. I really want
a good pipeline that if I walk all
through all the steps of the pipeline, some
deals are gonna fall out, some deals are
gonna close. I'm gonna be able to analyze
my closed lost deals. I'll be able to
analyze my closed won deals, and I'll be
able to see where I've got problems in
the pipe.
So I give you my take on this.
Okay? So let's take an inbound lead first.
(02:34):
We get different levels of inbound leads at
Sales Gravy. We get inbound leads that we
call list leads. That's a person who comes
in and they wanna be a part of
our newsletter,
or they download
one of our resources where the only thing
we ask for is their first name and
their email address. Well, those are list leads.
What I mean by list is those are
people who end up on
a our newsletter list or we send them
(02:55):
an announcement for a podcast. So we're just
creating a community with them. Some of those
people end up being hot leads down the
road. Some of them just consume our content.
Some of them buy a book along the
way, but we're just creating a relationship with
those individuals.
I don't want any of that in my
pipeline. That's not a pipeline opportunity.
The next level we have would be MQLs
(03:15):
or marketing qualified leads. These are leads that'll
come in through
a webinar or a download,
and we've asked for a lot of information.
And people understand it at this point in
time that when you're giving us all that
information, there's a price to pay to get
the download. And that is the the your
phone number, your email address,
where you work, your role. And there's an
(03:36):
expectation that at some point, we're going to
reach out to you to have a conversation
about whether or not you should move into
our pipeline.
I don't want those in my pipeline. That's
not a person saying that I'm ready to
buy. That's just a person saying, I've downloaded
this. Here's my information.
And then it's up to us to be
able to engage them in a conversation through
prospecting or a phone call or an email
(03:58):
or however we we communicate with them to
to get them qualified to see whether or
not they need to move.
The third group of people that come in
are people who have an open buying window,
and those are our hot leads. And we
know exactly what forms they come in on.
We know exactly what language people are using.
In those situations,
my ask to the salesperson is create
(04:18):
a deal the moment that comes in
because we're gonna close 95%
of those people who come in, we're gonna
close them. Because they came in with their
hand up. They're they're it sounds like this.
We've got a team of nine. We wanna
do a sales training program. We need to
talk to somebody.
When people come at us like that, we're
gonna win the deal. They come in like
(04:39):
this. They go, we've got our SKO coming
up in February. It's gonna be in Las
Vegas. We wanna hire Jeb. How much does
he cost? Like, that's a deal. That's inbound,
and that's how I look at inbound. So
two groups of inbound, I don't wanna anywhere
close to my pipeline. The other one I
want it because I know that the buying
window is open.
But if we take that to
(05:00):
deals that you're prospecting or people you're prospecting.
So, Tyler, you get a list of MQLs.
So we know who they are. Or you
pull a list off, say, Zoom info, and
you've got a list of people you're gonna
call into, and you call in let's say
you call me, and we have a quick
conversation,
and I agree to meet with you. Right?
So you call in and say, I think
Jessica taught you how to set an appointment
(05:21):
because blah blah blah. And I go, yeah.
I'll meet with you on Thursday.
At that point, like, this is where your
company is gonna have to make a decision.
If I've got a FTA schedule, do I
put it in the pipeline at that moment
at the FTA stage,
or do I wait until I meet with
them and qualify it for the next step?
I think you have to, as an organization,
kinda think through what that looks like. For
(05:44):
me, I want it in the pipe at
the FTA. You book the meeting with them,
put it in the pipe. Because if it's
in the pipe, now I'm able to judge
the show and no show rate. And I
can do that on a per rep basis.
So if I've got a rep who's setting
all kinds of FTAs, but their show rate's
only 10%,
I'm able to at least go back and
diagnose I've got a problem.
(06:04):
If I've got a rep who is putting
FTAs in and closing those FTAs or advancing
those FTAs to the next step at a
rate of 50%,
then I may be healthy or maybe I
need to go listen to the FTAs and
see how they're doing with those to advance
them forward. And if you go into our
our pipeline, you would see that we have
a step that's just FTA. I've booked an
FTA.
At that point, I've either booked a discovery
(06:26):
call next or I haven't. Or in some
cases,
if it's a hot lead, I have one
conversation with them and I close the deal,
so I move them forward on a one
call close. Somewhere in there, we're gonna advance.
And the reason that I like FTAs is
because
that's essentially my money ball or my key
metric for the health of a salesperson is
how many first time appointments are you booking
(06:48):
every single day or every single week. Most
business to business reps need to have about
two. And what I mean by that is
qualified. Right? The qualification is that you've got
all their information,
and they've agreed to step into your process.
So if I call you and have a
conversation
and you agree
to meet with me, then we've both agreed
to move into the process. Now we may
(07:08):
conduct the FTA
and not move it forward. We may go
ahead and close loss it right there on
the spot. That's fine.
Some organizations don't wanna do that because the
of the way they're managing their metrics, they
go, well, we don't wanna put in something
that is kind of maybe they'll show up,
maybe they won't show up. And we don't
wanna put something in where we haven't fully
qualified it because in a lot of cases,
you may be doing the rest of the
(07:29):
qualification in the FTA.
So we don't want it in there until.
And I understand that, and I get that.
If you're, like, super measuring or super crazy
about your close lost against your close won,
I just feel like FTA is where I
wanna begin
because of the way that I see FTAs
as the healthy measure of, am I getting
(07:50):
on base? So am I getting opportunities?
I think that somewhere in the middle of
that, you're gonna find a place that makes
sense. But I would tell you, if you're
waiting all the way until it's a sure
deal and you're putting in there, you're getting
no data from it, why do you even
have a pipeline? Right? And if you're putting
everything in, like, you're calling everything a pipeline
opportunity,
you're diluting any opportunity to measure
(08:13):
anything meaningful that will help you coach and
advance your sales organization.
Okay.
So identify that point of buy in. Basically,
identify an actual SQL and then create you
there. Okay. So for me, like, that that
qualification point is the point where both of
us agree to step into the sales process.
Right. Okay. I'll give you an example of
(08:33):
one where if you just looked at buying
windows. Right? Let's just say that you work
in a industry where almost everybody's under contract,
and we can identify contract x dates. You
could legitimately say, we're gonna take every
prospect in our database that has an identified
and confirmed contract x date. And when it
(08:54):
hits a certain point, it hits the pipeline.
You could do that.
I wouldn't do that because
even though we know there's there's a buying
window open, if the if the contract x
date's coming up, the buying window's open because
the person has to make a decision. They
either keep doing what they're doing,
they quit doing it altogether, or they get
another vendor to do it. Either one of
those things, they have to make a decision
(09:14):
because there's a point in time when that
contract's going to come up for a renewal,
and they have to do something.
But I wouldn't put it into the pipeline
until I've called them
and said, Tyler, your contract with x company
is coming up for renewal.
I wanna set a meeting with you because
it'll give you some different options so that
as you're making a decision, it'll give you
(09:36):
an apples to apples comparison,
and that makes it easier for you to
do business and and make better decisions for
your business. And you go, that sounds good.
Come over on Thursday. Boom. It's in the
pipe. Because at that point, there's a buying
window open that we've identified, and you and
I both agreed to step into the process.
That's how I look at that. Okay. Awesome.
That was great. Thank you.
(09:57):
In your book, I'm I'm gonna forget the
exact numbers here, but there's a moment where
you're talking about the call blocks that you
initiate, whether it's for when you're consulting or
it's your own team. And the numbers are
amazing. And if I'm remembering correctly, it's two
designated call blocks and something like hundreds plus
of calls during those block.
Naturally, when we talk about this with our
team members, there's a lot of excuses, many
(10:19):
of which can be resolved pretty quickly.
When you get past the motivational excuses, there
is a fairly valid argument that comes up,
which is the time dedicated to lead building
and then, of course, the process of actually
dialing.
The question here is, a, have you figured
out a solution for efficiency in that call
block?
And b, is the answer just like an
(10:39):
auto dialer or some software? Here's number one
thing for efficiency.
Researching
and building a list is not prospecting.
So the way we get that done is
that when we're prospecting, we're prospecting. We're just
chopping wood.
So, yeah, you can you can use an
autodialer. We don't use an autodialer, but you
can use an autodialer. I guess we do
use one because in HubSpot, they just click
(11:00):
the phone number and move to the next
thing. It's really hard for me when I
get those calls from salespeople and there's that
moment of silence.
Like, that that just kills the call. But
we just click the button. Click you know,
just click the number and move to the
next one. But you gotta have the list
ready in advance. If you've got that in
your cadence,
then you know, like, this list on this
particular day, every one of these is a
(11:21):
phone call. Next day, every one of these
is an email. So the next day, every
one of these is, LinkedIn.
So I would start there. The other thing
that we do is and you experience this
in canonical prospecting boot camp. You experience the
call blocks. Right? So we have these high
intensity prospecting sprints.
And if you think about it, if I
said you got fifteen minutes to make $15
(11:41):
at one appointment, most salespeople are gonna make
at least 10. Think about that. If you
run four of those, you've made 40
calls at a minimum.
Now that doesn't mean that if you get
someone on the phone, you have a long
conversation,
you won't make 10. That's okay. But the
whole idea is it gets FTAs have conversations.
So that's you're not always gonna hit that
number, but that's 40.
(12:03):
Think about that. We're just saying we're making
a hundred before noon. If you do forty
and forty and forty, you made a 20
in three hours. This isn't something that's a
theory.
We're running these these events for our clients
all over the country. We we get their
sales teams in a room, and they're stunned.
Like, they're literally stunned that you can make
that many calls.
But all we're doing is setting the conditions
(12:25):
to do that because what most salespeople do
is they come in the morning, and then
they got their computer on and chats up
and, you know, they've got this going on,
and then they get something from TikTok and
they're watching a cat video.
And you you sit with them and they're
taking, like, twelve minutes between every dial. And,
of course, they're not getting anything done. And
then they look at you and go, how
is it possible for me to do any
of this work? I can't get anything done.
(12:45):
So when you set the conditions,
then you're able to change that. So we
don't research while we prospect. We get our
list together, and then we prospect the list.
And when we prospect the list, we prospect
the list. If it's a bad list, it's
a bad list. If it's a good list,
it's a good list. But we know that
the law of averages are on our in
our favor if we just do this every
single day.
Now most business to business salespeople
(13:07):
don't need to make that many dials. Most
business to business salespeople, if you had one
full hour every day of solid prospecting,
they're gonna be good. They're gonna have all
of the meetings that they need to set.
My executive assistant
did cold calls yesterday.
So she's having to fill up the next
Fanatical Prospecting Boot Camp. So think about this.
She made 10 cold calls yesterday,
(13:29):
cold. I mean,
freezing
cold. She had a 30% pickup rate. She
talked to three people.
She spent I heard I I asked her
this morning what her time investment was. She
spent about twenty minutes doing it, which is
you'd imagine, like, she's never made cold calls
before. It's the first time she's ever done
it. So she was up with our sales
team and decided she was gonna do it.
So she could be faster.
(13:50):
Think about that.
Yeah. With her, she has made 10 a
day. I'm happy because 10 a day is
50 a week. 50 a week, you start
adding the numbers up. It gets big. So
that's how you do that. My point with
the extraordinary numbers is is that
everybody's capable of doing it if they just
decide to do it. Most people don't decide
to do it.
(14:10):
Yeah. Yeah. The mindset shift. Yep. Awesome. Thank
you.
Tyler's question was one that we hear all
the time.
When should I create a deal in the
pipeline?
It might seem simple, but the answer reveals
everything about how you run your sales process
and whether you're managing data or just clinging
(14:31):
to hope.
Here's the truth. If your pipeline is full
of fluff with unqualified deals, wishful thinking opportunities,
you're not coaching your team. You're managing fiction.
On the other hand, if you wait until
a deal is almost closed to log it,
you're missing critical data that helps you spot
early problems, track activity, and forecast accurately. The
(14:51):
key is to identify the moment when the
true mutual buy in happens when both the
prospect and the seller agree to step into
the real sales process. For us, that's the
moment called the FTA,
the first time appointment. It's the most reliable
metric for pipeline health and rep productivity.
If you're setting FTAs, you are creating movement,
and movement in sales creates results. So here's
(15:14):
your takeaway. Don't create deals based on gut
feelings, and don't wait until contracts are drafted.
Set clear internal rules. Once the FTA is
booked with a qualified buyer, boom,
it's in the pipe. That way, you're tracking
reps, measuring conversion, and coaching real behavior. And
if you're out there managing your own book
(15:34):
of business, remember, the health of your pipeline
starts with discipline.
Get clear about what qualifies,
stick to it, and hold yourself accountable. This
is Jeb Blunt Junior, and thank you so
much for listening to this segment of the
Sales Gravy Podcast. If you wanna ask your
questions, go to salesGravy.com/ask.
That's salesgravy.com/ask.
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