Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Latest Episodes:

Why Commoditized Selling Builds Better Salespeople Feb 19, 2026

Show notes

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 yourprocess 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.

—

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.

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Use the Ledge Technique for Overcoming Objections (Ask Jeb) Feb 17, 2026

Show notes

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.

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Main Character Syndrome: Why Prospects Tune You Out (Money Monday) Feb 16, 2026

Show notes

You’re at a networking event and someone corners you. For the next ten minutes, they talk nonstop about their vacation, their dog, their new car. You’re not having a conversation. You’re trapped in their monologue. You’re annoyed. You tune out. You start looking for the exit.

That’s exactly how your prospects feel when you make yourself the star of the conversation.

What Is Sales Main Character Syndrome?

Sales main character syndrome is when you position yourself as the hero instead of your prospect. You see it everywhere:

On the phone: You launch into a five-minute pitch about your company history before asking a single question.

In email: You send giant blocks of text about features without mentioning their actual problems.

On LinkedIn: Your connect request immediately hits them with “Here’s my product, here’s my calendar link, let’s meet.”

No matter the channel, it all leads back to the same place: your product, your company, your agenda.

Prospects don’t care about your product yet. They care about their problems, their goals, and what’s at stake in their world. When you make it all about you, you trigger resistance. Buyers feel sold to instead of collaborated with. And that leads to ghosting, objections, and stalled deals.

Nobody wants to sit through a feature dump. People need relevance. They want to feel heard and know you actually get them.

The Real Cost of Sales Main Character Syndrome

Sales main character syndrome has consequences that will wreck your quota.

Prospects disengage. When you focus on yourself and your product instead of the buyer and their needs, they tune out. Calls feel like lectures. Emails read like brochures. Messages get deleted without a response. Lose their attention, and you’ve lost your shot.
You miss the real opportunities. By making the interaction about yourself, you fail to ask the right questions. You don’t hear what’s actually going on in their world. You can’t identify the true pain points, the real goals, or what’s actually motivating them. So you pitch solutions that don’t align with what they need. You waste discovery time chasing the wrong problems.
Destroy trust before it’s built. Your prospects stop seeing you as a helpful guide. Instead, you’re just another salesperson pushing a product. Without trust, everything gets harder and long-term relationships become impossible.

The cost is too high. So how do you flip the script?

The Mindset Shift: From Hero to Trusted Guide

Your job is to be a trusted guide, not the hero. Think Yoda, not Luke Skywalker.

Your prospect is the hero of their own story. They’re the ones facing the challenge, making the decision, and living with the outcome.

When prospects feel like the main character, they engage more. They open up. They trust you. And trust moves deals forward.

Here’s a simple three-step framework you can use in every conversation.

Step #1: Change Your “I” to “Why”

Stop starting conversations with:

“I want to show you…”
“I’d love to introduce…”
“I think you’ll like…”

Your buyers don’t care about your “I.” They care about their “why.”

Why should this matter to them? Why is it relevant right now? Why does it solve a problem they’re actually facing?

Lead with “why,” and the focus shifts from your agenda to their reality. You’ll stop sounding like a salesperson and start being seen as someone who understands their world.

Before: “I’d love to show you our new platform and walk you through all the features we’ve built.”

After: “Companies in your industry are losing 20% of their pipeline to manual data entry errors. Here’s how to fix that.”

One is about you. The other is about them.

Step #2: Define What You Solve, Not What You Sell

Most salespeople can rattle off what they sell. A platform. A service. A software solution. That’s not what your buyer cares about.

Buyers don’t wake up thinking, “I need a new vendor today.” They wake up thinking, “I need to fix this problem that’s making my life harder.”

When you define the problem you solve instead of the product you sell, you build immediate value. You position yourself as a partner in their success, not just another pitch in their inbox.

Product-focused: “We’re a sales engagement platform with email sequencing, call tracking, and analytics.”

Problem-focused: “We help sales teams stop losing deals to slow follow-up and inconsistent outreach.”

Stop leading with what you sell and start leading with what you solve. Conversations convert faster when prospects see themselves in the problem you’re addressing.

Step #3: Listen to Hear, Not to Respond

The biggest mistake in sales? Listening just long enough to jump in with your answer.

Most reps wait for their turn to talk. They’re mentally preparing the pitch while the buyer is still speaking. It feels efficient. It’s actually ineffective.

Listening to hear means shutting up long enough to understand. You catch the nuance. You pick up on the emotion. You uncover the hidden pain points that competitors miss because they’re too busy pitching.

Slow down. Tune in. Let your buyer feel heard. That’s when trust starts to build and when real opportunity opens up.

Your Challenge: Put It Into Practice This Week

The shift from sales main character syndrome to trusted guide isn’t complicated. But it does require awareness and intention. You have to catch yourself when you’re about to launch into your standard pitch. Pause and ask, “Am I making this about me or about them?”

Your prospect is the hero. Your job is to guide them to success. Make it about them. Lead with relevance. Listen deeply. Watch what happens when you get this right.

Because the most successful salespeople aren’t trying to be impressive. They’re trying to be useful.

Make your prospect the main character in every conversation. Do it consistently, and you won’t have to chase attention. You’ll earn it.

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Stop getting tuned out. Download the Free ACED Buyer Style Playbook and learn how to speak your buyer’s language.

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Stone Tablets, Trade Shows, and Telephones: 4,000 Years of Sales History Feb 12, 2026

Show notes

Imagine that you’re so angry about a business deal gone wrong that you grab a chisel, find a slab of stone, and spend hours carving your complaint. That’s exactly what a Mesopotamian merchant did in 1750 and made sales history.

The merchant was furious because he’d been promised high-grade copper, but the final product was subpar. That angry customer complaint is now sitting in the British Museum, 4,000 years later. The tablet reads: “What do you take me for? That you treat someone like me with such contempt?”

If you think dealing with issues in the sales process is a modern problem, you’re off by about four millennia.

Sales Hustle Is Ancient

We talk about sales like it’s a modern corporate invention. CRMs and automated sequences are new, but the art of the deal and dealing with angry customers? That’s been around since humans started trading.

The copper merchant in 1750 BCE wasn’t just selling copper. He was managing client expectations, handling logistics, and clearly failing at quality control. The core practices of B2B sales—promise, delivery, and relationship management—haven’t changed.

1600s: Sales Becomes a Profession

Fast forward to 1600, and you see the founding of the East India Trading Companies. They were some of the first corporations that allowed people to buy shares in a business.

One of the East India Trading Companies was owned by “the 17 gentlemen”—a group of wealthy investors who funded global trade expeditions. They kept spices like nutmeg, pepper, and cinnamon flowing across continents. The spices were so valuable that they were practically currency.

This was B2B sales at scale. Shareholders’ expected returns. Merchants negotiated deals across continents. The stakes were massive, and so were the profits.

This era established something critical to modern sellers: the separation between ownership and operation. The 17 gentlemen didn’t sail the ships or negotiate every spice deal. They hired people to do it. Sales stopped being a personal trade and became a repeatable profession with accountability structures built in.

1851: Visibility and Competition Arrive

The Great Exhibition in London in 1851 was the world’s first massive B2B trade show in sales history. Thousands of exhibitors. Hundreds of thousands of attendees. A giant glass building called the Crystal Palace.

Nearly 200 years later, sales pros still pack convention centers, set up booths, and fight to stand out in a sea of competitors.

This is where B2B sales became visible. You weren’t just competing against one or two local merchants anymore. You were standing next to dozens of alternatives, all promising similar value. Differentiation became mandatory.

Following up meant writing a letter and waiting weeks for a response. Today, if you’re not following up within 24 hours, you’re losing to competitors who are.

1957: Reach and Leverage Scale Up

The first inside sales team was formed at a company called Dial America in 1957. Before that, if you wanted to sell, you hit the road. Door-to-door, city-to-city, face-to-face. Every single deal required physical presence.

The telephone changed everything. Suddenly, salespeople could work virtually, reach more prospects, and close deals without leaving the office. One seller could now have 20 conversations in a day instead of three. The math of sales productivity fundamentally shifted.

Fast forward to today, and inside sales is the dominant model. The tools have evolved—Zoom calls, screen shares, digital demos—but the core principle remains: you don’t need to be in the same room to build trust and close deals.

From Stone Tablets to Instant Messages: Why Speed Matters Now

Think about the effort that the merchant put into carving his complaint into stone. He didn’t fire off a quick email. He didn’t leave a one-star Google review. He created a permanent record that would outlive both him and the seller by thousands of years.

Today, complaints are easy. Maybe too easy. A customer can blast you on LinkedIn, tank your review scores, or CC your entire executive team on an email thread—all before lunch.

Every major shift in B2B sales increased speed. Trade shows multiplied visibility. Telephones let sellers reach 20 prospects a day instead of three. Email collapsed follow-up from weeks to hours. Social media made reputation instant and permanent.

In 1750 BCE, you had time to respond. Now, you have hours—maybe minutes. Each acceleration rewarded the sellers who could execute fast without sacrificing quality. The ones who couldn’t keep up disappeared.

Why This Timeline Matters More Than You Think

We’re in another massive shift in sales history. AI, automation, predictive analytics—the pace is relentless. It’s easy to think everything has changed. Zoom out 4,000 years, and the pattern emerges: speed accelerates, but the core practices stay the same.

So the next time you get a harsh email from a customer, remember that stone tablet. You don’t have to worry about your failure being displayed in a museum 4,000 years from now. But you do have to worry about your reputation spreading across the internet in hours.

The tools change, the pace accelerates, but the rule is simple: earn trust, deliver value, and handle problems before they handle you.

You just saw how history teaches that speed and execution have always mattered — and now AI is the biggest shift we’ve seen yet. If you want to turn the disruption into an advantage, download The FREE AI Edge Book Club Guide.

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How Do You Stop Prospects From No-Showing Virtual Appointments (Ask Jeb) Feb 10, 2026

Show notes

Here’s a question that’ll frustrate every salesperson reading this: What do you do when you prospect, set the meeting, block the time on your calendar, and then… your prospect no-shows?

That’s the challenge Emily Weissmueller faces every single day. Emily is a former elementary school teacher who pivoted into K-12 edtech sales eleven years ago. She works with special education administrators, and like so many salespeople in 2026, her meetings are primarily virtual.

She’s doing everything right: prospecting consistently, securing appointments, sending calendar invites. But when it’s time for the meeting? Hit or miss. Sometimes they show up. Sometimes she’s sitting there waiting while nobody logs on.

If you’ve ever stared at a Zoom room alone wondering if your prospect forgot about you, you know exactly how this feels. And if you’re wondering whether confirmation emails help or hurt, you’re asking the wrong question entirely.

The Virtual Meeting Paradox

Let’s be honest about something: Virtual meetings are throwaway appointments for both sides.

When you had to drive four hours to meet someone in person, both parties had serious skin in the game. You invested time, gas money, and effort. Your prospect blocked their calendar knowing you were making the trip. Neither of you would casually blow that off.

But virtual meetings? They’re low commitment on both ends. No one’s driving anywhere. It’s just a calendar block that can easily get bumped by the next urgent thing that pops up. And when you’re selling into education like Emily is, where everything moves infinitely slow and decision-makers are incredibly risk-averse, you’ve got even more working against you.

The question isn’t whether to send a confirmation email. The real question is: How do you stack the deck so heavily in your favor that prospects feel obligated to show up?

The Commitment and Consistency Framework

There’s a principle in human behavior called commitment and consistency. When people commit to something, they typically feel compelled to follow through. Otherwise, they feel guilty. And guilt is actually useful because you can leverage it to reschedule when someone doesn’t show.

But the goal isn’t to make prospects feel guilty after they no-show. The goal is to engineer so many small commitments throughout the process that they show up in the first place.

Here’s the system that works:

Step 1: Confirm Verbally When You Set the Meeting

When your prospect agrees to meet, always repeat it back: “Okay, so I’ve got you on Thursday, January 26th at 2:00 PM. Did I get that right?”

When they say yes, that’s commitment number one. You’re putting it in their brain. You’re making it real.

Then say this: “Let me grab your email and I’ll send you a meeting invite for your calendar just to make it convenient for you.”

This does two things. First, it confirms you have the right email. Second, it gets another yes. That’s commitment number two.

Step 2: Send a Meeting Invite That Actually Helps

Most meeting invites are useless. They say “Meeting with Jeb Blount” or “Sales Call” and include seventeen different international dial-in numbers that nobody needs.

Here’s what your meeting invite should look like:

Title: Emily Weissmueller (Company Name) + Prospect Name (School Name) – Why We’re Meeting

Location: Virtual Meeting (then paste the meeting link, nothing else)

Notes: Keep it simple. Here’s the meeting link. If it’s a phone option, include just that number. Then add: “If anything changes, here’s my direct number and email.”

When your prospect looks at their calendar the morning of the meeting and sees this, they know exactly who you are, why you’re meeting, and how to join. You own the moral high ground.

Step 3: Send a Video (This Is Non-Negotiable)

The next morning after you set the meeting, pull out your phone and record a 20-30 second video. Look at the camera. Smile. Sound excited.

“Emily, this is Jeb at Sales Gravy. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me. I’m so excited to spend time learning about you and your mission for helping these kids. Just want to confirm our meeting is on January 26th at 2:00 PM. The invite is on your calendar. I can’t wait to see you.”

Send that via email.

Now think about what you’ve just done. You’ve made it personal. You’ve shown effort. You’ve demonstrated that you actually care about this conversation. It’s exponentially harder for them to no-show because they can see you’re a real human who invested time in this relationship.

This philosophy is about going the extra mile to demonstrate that you’re different, that you care, and that this matters.

Step 4: Leave a Voicemail the Day Before

The afternoon before your meeting, when you know your prospect is likely gone for the day, call and leave a voicemail.

“Hey Emily, this is Jeb. I’m so excited to meet with you tomorrow. I’ve been thinking about your school and the ways we might be able to help. I can’t wait to learn more about what you’re trying to accomplish for these kids. Just a reminder, our meeting is at 2:00 PM tomorrow. All the info is in your calendar. If anything changes, give me a call.”

You’re doing the heavy lifting. You’re reminding them. You’re expressing genuine interest in their world, not just your sale.

Step 5: The Morning-Of Email (Optional)

Here’s where the A/B testing comes in. Some salespeople swear by the morning-of confirmation email. Others think it gives prospects an easy out.

My take? Test both approaches and track your show rates. Do half your appointments with the morning email, half without it, and see which converts better. Even a 2-3% improvement in show rate compounds significantly over a year.

If you do send the morning email, make it about them: “Emily, I’m really looking forward to our conversation today at 2:00 PM. I can’t wait to learn more about your mission and see if there’s a way we can support what you’re building.”

Play to their heartstrings. People love talking about themselves and their work. Make it easy for them to want to show up.

What to Do When You Send a Confirmation Email

Now, if you’re going to send a confirmation email, there are specific scenarios where it’s absolutely required:

You’re driving four hours to meet someone in person
You’re bringing executives or your boss to the meeting
It’s a final presentation or closing meeting with a major opportunity
Multiple stakeholders are coordinating calendars

In those cases, you’re not just confirming—you’re protecting your time and theirs. You’re making sure you don’t waste an executive’s schedule or drive across the state for nothing.

But for a standard first appointment? The video and voicemail sequence will outperform a confirmation email every single time.

The Real Problem: Systems, Not People

No-shows aren’t a people problem. They’re a systems problem.

When you build a repeatable prospecting system that includes verbal confirmation, calendar invites with clear details, personal video, and day-before voicemail, you engineer commitment at every stage.

You’re not hoping prospects remember. You’re not relying on their calendar notifications. You’re building a runway that allows them to land in the meeting because you’ve made it nearly impossible for them to forget or blow you off.

And when someone does no-show after all that effort? You own the moral high ground. You can call back with confidence: “Hey, I know things come up. I sent the video, left the voicemail, and had everything on your calendar. Let’s get this rescheduled because I’m genuinely excited to learn about what you’re working on.”

That conversation is dramatically different than calling back after sending one email and hoping for the best.

The Efficiency Multiplier

Think about what happens when your show rate improves by even 10%. If you were setting ten appointments per week and six were showing up, that’s a 60% show rate. Bump that to seven showing up, and you’re at 70%.

That’s one extra conversation per week. Four extra conversations per month. Forty-eight extra conversations per year.

If your close rate is 20%, that’s nearly ten additional deals per year just from improving your meeting show rate. That’s the power of sales execution at the highest level.

Your Action Plan

If you’re struggling with no-shows, implement this system immediately:

For every appointment you set:

Confirm it verbally when you schedule it
Send a detailed calendar invite with clean formatting
Record and send a personal video the next day
Leave an enthusiastic voicemail the day before
A/B test the morning-of email and track results

Track these metrics:

Total appointments set
Show rate percentage
No-show rate
Reschedule success rate

After 30 days, analyze what’s working and double down on it.

The Bottom Line

Virtual meetings are easy to ignore. That’s just reality in 2026. Your prospects are busy, distracted, and constantly reprioritizing.

Your job isn’t to guilt them into showing up. Your job is to build a system that makes showing up feel like the obvious, natural choice because you’ve demonstrated care, invested effort, and made it personal.

Stop sending one confirmation email and hoping for the best. Start building commitment through repetition, personalization, and genuine interest in your prospect’s world.

That’s how you fill your calendar with meetings that actually happen. That’s how you stop wasting time staring at empty Zoom rooms. And that’s how you build a sales career based on systems, not hope.

Meetings happen by design, not by luck. Build the runway. Land the meeting. Close the deal.

Ready to Master the Complete Prospecting System?

The tactics in this article are just the beginning. If you want to learn the complete methodology for filling your pipeline with qualified appointments that actually show up, join us at an upcoming Sales Gravy Live Event. You’ll get hands-on training in prospecting, qualification, objection handling, and closing from Jeb Blount and the Sales Gravy team. Don’t leave your sales success to chance—invest in the skills that separate top performers from everyone else.

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Single-Contact Selling is Killing 34% of Your Deals (Money Monday) Feb 08, 2026

Show notes

You’ve got a champion. Someone inside the account who gets it. They love your solution, they’re fighting for your proposal, and they’re feeding you intelligence about the decision-making process.

So you’re golden, right?

Wrong. One reorganization, one promotion, one departure, and your deal could vanish overnight.

Research from LinkedIn Sales Solutions analyzed thousands of enterprise deals and found something most salespeople refuse to believe: sales teams that build relationships with multiple stakeholders inside an account are 34% more likely to win.

That’s the difference between hitting quota and missing it. Between a banner year and a brutal one.

Why Single-Threaded Deals Die

On average, 4-7 people influence a complex B2B buying decision.

Even if you nail the pitch, you’re still just one voice in a conversation happening behind closed doors. A conversation where people you’ve never met are raising objections you’ll never hear. Where priorities you don’t know about are shifting the criteria.

Your champion can be dismissed as “the person who likes that vendor.” But when you’ve got three advocates from different departments? Consensus wins deals.

Your Champion Won’t Stick Around

One in five of the people you’re counting on right now won’t be in their role twelve months from now. They’ll get promoted, reassigned, poached by a competitor, or laid off in the next restructuring.

When that happens to your sole contact, your deal doesn’t just stall. It dies. The new person in that role has zero relationship with you, zero context on your solution, and zero incentive to champion something their predecessor started.

But if you’ve built what top performers call “account insulation”—relationships with two, three, or four people across different departments and levels—the web flexes when someone leaves. It doesn’t break.

Weak Ties Matter More Than You Think

We’re trained to go deep with our primary contact. Build trust. Understand their pain points. Tailor every message to their specific needs.

That’s not wrong. It’s just incomplete.

In complex selling scenarios, influence often spreads through what researchers call weak ties—the casual, adjacent connections that link clusters of strong relationships. These are your amplifiers.

A brief introduction. A shared article. A helpful insight that makes someone in operations remember your name when your solution comes up in a meeting you’re not in. These loose connections become the difference between a deal that stalls and one that scales.

Think about how deals from referrals close. They close twice as fast as deals that start cold. Accounts with multiple contacts grow larger, stay longer, and refer more business. The pattern is clear.

Get enough internal referrals, and you stop being the vendor someone works with. You become the partner everyone trusts.

Five Mistakes That Keep You Single-Threaded

Account multithreading fails most often before it ever really begins. Not because it is hard, but because salespeople sabotage it with impatience, poor judgment, or misplaced effort. If you recognize any of these behaviors, they are costing you leverage inside the account.

Trying to build fifty superficial relationships instead of multiple deep, meaningful connections. Spray and pray doesn’t work in prospecting, and it doesn’t work in account multithreading.
Asking for referrals before you’ve built credibility. You can’t extract value before you’ve created it.
Failing to nurture the relationships you’ve already initiated. You can’t plant seeds and never water them.
Ignoring the law of reciprocity. If you don’t offer value first—business insights, useful data, relevant introductions—people won’t feel any obligation to help you. You’ll burn through goodwill and get nothing back.
Wearing out your welcome. If you’ve reached out multiple times with relevant insights and gotten silence, that’s a signal. Move on.

How to Build Your Account Web With Multi-Threading

Start by mapping the web of people connected to your account. Decision makers, influencers, skeptics, the quiet analysts whose opinions shape what the decision makers think. Write it down. Visualize the relationships you have, the ones you need, and the blank spaces in between.

Then ask questions that open doors and show you recognize the decision is bigger than one person.

“Who else on your team would have a point of view on this?”

“Would it be helpful if I shared what other departments are doing with similar tools?”

“Is there someone else who should see this?”

Or use my favorite: “I need your advice on this.” That phrase invokes reciprocity and dramatically increases the probability they’ll give you the referral.

When trust is formed, asking for a direct referral becomes an act of generosity rather than an intrusion. Frame it around value, not obligation.

“Would you be willing to introduce me to your colleague in operations? I think she’d have an interesting take on what we’re talking about.”

“If anyone else on your team might benefit from this, would you mind sharing my name?”

People say yes far more often than you think when you ask this way.

The Quiet Chorus That Closes Deals

The more people who trust you, the faster and further your message travels inside the account.

You’ve got accounts in your pipeline right now sitting on a single thread. One job change, and that deal you’ve been nursing for months vanishes overnight.

Stop searching for the one perfect contact. Start building a small community inside every account.

It’s not a single voice that carries your deal through. It’s three voices in three different departments saying the same thing about you when you’re not in the room.

Protect Your Pipeline with Discipline

Account multithreading isn’t complicated, but it requires discipline and a shift in how you approach relationship-building. If you’re ready to protect your pipeline, increase your win rate by 34%, and build accounts that grow instead of churn, start mapping your key accounts today. Identify the blank spaces. Ask better questions. Build the web before you need it.

Ready to close more deals? Explore Keith Lubner’s courses on Sales Gravy University.

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Why Your Sales Team is Underperforming — Patrick Lencioni on Working Genius Feb 05, 2026

Show notes

Patrick Lencioni joins Jeb Blount to reveal how discovering your Working Genius can transform your career and eliminate workplace frustration. Learn why doing the wrong kind of work drains you (even if you love your job), and how identifying your natural talents creates joy and peak performance. Pat shares the accidental discovery that led to this breakthrough productivity framework now used by over 1.5 million people, including the entire Sales Gravy team.

You'll learn:

The six types of work and why nobody excels at ALL of them
How to identify which work energizes you vs. drains you
Why talented people feel miserable in the wrong role
Using Working Genius to fix team dynamics without losing people
Surprising applications of Working Genius

Over 1.5 million people have discovered their working genius. Most of them wish they’d found it sooner. Visit workinggenius.com and take the assessment. Use coupon code GRAVY for 20% off.

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Why Cold Calling Will Never Die (Ask Jeb) Feb 03, 2026

Show notes

Here’s a question that hits every sales professional right in the gut: What do you do when your email prospecting tanks and you’re staring at response rates that are circling the drain?

That’s the question Tara asked on a recent episode of Ask Jeb on The Sales Gravy Podcast, and it’s one I hear constantly from SDRs, account executives, and even sales managers who’ve convinced themselves that cold calling is outdated.

If you’re nodding along, thinking email is the future and cold calling is dead, you need to wake up. Email efficiency is going down without bounds, and if you’re not picking up the phone, you’re leaving money on the table.

The Hard Truth About Email Prospecting

Let me be blunt: Your email isn’t failing because the channel is broken. It’s failing because what you’re doing is terrible.

Before you blame the medium, look in the mirror. Did people ignore your email because you sent them something genuinely personalized and valuable? Or did they ignore you because you followed up thirteen times in five days? Did they ghost you because your seven colleagues already called them that same day?

The brutal reality is that most salespeople treat email like a spray-and-pray numbers game. They blast generic messages, add zero personalization, and then wonder why nobody responds. Meanwhile, they avoid the one thing that actually works: picking up the phone and having real conversations.

Why Cold Calling Will Always Matter

Cold calling isn’t going anywhere. It never has been, and it never will be.

You want to know why? Because sales is a human business. People buy from people they trust, and you can’t build trust through automated emails that sound like they were written by AI.

A phone call gives you something email never can: the ability to prove you’re a real human being who’s genuinely there to help, not just to pitch and sell.

When you call someone and say, “Hey, I sent you an email last week with this case study because I saw you talked about this at the Outbound Conference,” you’re showing them you did your homework. You’re not just another robot in their inbox.

Here’s a line I love: “Would I be the worst salesperson in the world if I didn’t also try to call you?” It’s honest, it’s human, and it cuts through the noise.

You Don’t Know What to Say? Make the Calls

The number one excuse I hear from salespeople: “I don’t know what to say.”

Here’s my advice: Make one hundred calls and talk to people. They’ll teach you.

You’re going to learn what not to say. You’re going to start seeing patterns in how your prospects think, what problems they face, and what language matters to them.

This is how you develop business acumen that separates you from the pack. You can’t learn it behind a keyboard.

I was in an alignment call today with a new client, and they said, “You totally understand us.” Why? Last week, I was with a business adjacent to their industry, learned their language, and pulled that knowledge into the next call.

Use Tools to Compress Your Learning Curve

Use tools like ZoomInfo to accelerate your learning curve. At Sales Gravy, we use it every day to find information about people, see what they’re doing on our website, and get intent signals that build our lists automatically.

You can use these tools to learn the language of industries you’re breaking into. You can see company news, understand their challenges, and show up on calls sounding like you belong.

But here’s the key: The tool doesn’t make the call for you. It gives you the ammunition. You still have to do the work.

Be Strategic and Resourceful

Here’s a strategy most salespeople are too lazy to try: If you’re having trouble getting through to a decision maker, call someone else in the company who’ll actually talk to you.

Selling HR services? Call a sales rep. They’ll talk your ear off about the company and might even make an introduction.

Try this: “Hey, I know you’re in sales. I’ve been trying to get hold of Joseph for nine months. Is there any way you could help me out?”

That’s not being cheesy. That’s being resourceful. But you have to be genuine. You can’t just ask for something without building rapport.

Your Action Plan

If you’re struggling with email effectiveness:

Pick up the damn phone. Stop making excuses about why cold calling doesn’t work. It works if you work it.

Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Introducing yourself to strangers will never be easy, but it’s the price of admission for being great at sales.

Use data strategically. Build sequences that interweave multiple channels over 30, 60, 90 days. Email, phone, LinkedIn, video. Give yourself the best odds.

Don’t oversell on the cold call. A little interest isn’t an invitation to vomit your pitch. Your job is to earn the next conversation.

Make one more call. At the end of the day, when you’re tired, make one more call. That’s where discipline separates winners from everyone else.

The Bottom Line

Email isn’t dead, but it’s not a magic bullet. Cold calling isn’t outdated. It’s the foundation of everything we do in sales.

Stop hiding behind your keyboard. Stop blaming the tools. Stop making excuses.

The shortest path to a meeting is through a real conversation. That’s how you build relationships, develop trust, and separate yourself from every other salesperson who’s too afraid to dial.

Get outside your skin. Be genuine. Be there to help. And pick up the phone.

Ready to take your prospecting skills to the next level? Join us at one of our upcoming Sales Gravy LIVE events where you’ll learn directly from top sales leaders and get hands-on coaching to transform your results.

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First Month Sales Results Gut Check (Money Monday) Feb 02, 2026

Show notes

On this first Monday of the second month of the year, it’s time for a gut check. First, we need to check where we are against our new year goals. Next, we need to take stock of our first month’s sales performance and make adjustments.

We’re just a little more than 30 days away from our New Year’s intentions, resolutions, and goals. A month ago, we set out into the new year with hope and ambition that this year would be our best ever and that we’d make positive lasting changes in our lives.

It’s Easy to Slip Off the Track

You’ll remember that discipline is sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. But as time goes by and sticking with new habits gets more challenging, it’s easy to forget what motivated us to make the changes in the first place. It’s easy to let down our guard and go back to our comfort zone.

The farther away we get from our intentions, the more likely it is that we allow our discipline to slip and get off track. It’s just human nature.

Small Slips in Discipline Can Add Up Quickly

Let’s say you kicked off the new year determined to have your best sales year ever, and you knew that meant filling your pipeline daily by getting Fanatical about Prospecting. But upon reflection, you realize that days have passed since you picked up the phone, knocked on a door, or talked with customers.

You’ve been making excuses to avoid the very activities that move you closer to your goals.

I’ll admit that it happened to me just this past week. This month has been non-stop travel — 12 flights, 10 cities, 8 keynotes, 5 full days delivering training to sales teams. Toward the end of the week, I got tired, made excuses, and let my exercise and nutrition routine slide.

This was something I promised myself I wouldn’t do when the year started. I know that if I don’t stop right now and recommit to my goals, then there is a good chance that I’ll continue down this negative path — because it’s easy.

Revisit Your Goals and Resolutions

This is exactly why NOW is a good time for a gut check and a look in the mirror. Pause and carve out time today to revisit your goals, resolutions, and intentions.

Sit down and think about what you decided to achieve back in early January. Visualize what it was that motivated you. Picture what you want most and where you want to be at the end of this year.

Go back and re-listen to the Money Monday episodes on building a personal business plan, reflection vs. regret, and why personal goals are essential for sales discipline.

Then recommit to your goals. Remember the feelings you had when you set them, and make an intentional decision to get back on track.

Evaluate Your First Month’s Performance Against Your Sales Goals

Next, step back and evaluate your first month’s sales performance. As you do, you’ll likely find one of three scenarios:

You Crushed It – You had a killer month and blew your goals out of the water.
You Were Average – You hit quota or did “okay,” but you know you’re capable of much higher performance.
You Bombed – You missed your number and ended the month worse than you hoped.

Great Sales Month

If You Crushed it, and you’re at the top of the ranking report, fantastic, congratulations!

But be very careful not to let off the gas. It’s likely you worked very hard last month to achieve these results. There will be the temptation to take a breather.

Trust me, if you do, this complacency will come back to bite you.

Now is the time to recommit to doing the activity that fueled your success last month so you don’t end up with a lackluster February and a disastrous March.

In other words, you’ve set the foundation for a huge year, take advantage of what you have accomplished, and keep the pedal to the metal!

Average Sales Month

If you had an average or just OK month — maybe you hit quota, maybe you came close, but you know you’ve got more in the tank — then it’s time for some honest self-reflection.

Ask yourself:

What held you back from greatness?
What could you have done differently that would have resulted in higher sales productivity?

Maybe you needed to prospect harder. Perhaps you could have pushed a little harder to close some of your pipeline opportunities. It could have been that your pipeline wasn’t big enough from the start, and you ended up scrambling to make your numbers, but otherwise, you did everything right.

It’s okay, you haven’t hurt yourself. You are still in a good position to have a great year. But you’ll need to identify your performance gaps and plan to overcome them in February.

This is a good time to sit down with your coach or mentor, break down your performance, and get guidance on where you can make tweaks and get better.

If you don’t have a coach and you want to talk with someone, go to https://salesgravy.com/coach to get help.

Bad Sales Month

If you bombed, if your month was downright awful, then you’re going to need to move fast to make adjustments.

Getting behind the eight ball at the beginning of the year is no fun. You don’t want to chase your tail for the rest of the year.

The key is taking positive action now. Rather than dwelling on the negatives — which is super easy to do — pull your head up and start breaking down what happened.

Empty Pipe

Did you have an empty pipeline, so you had nothing to close? That happens to a lot of salespeople in the first month of the year. Go back and listen to the How to Fix an Empty Pipeline Now Money Monday episode from a few weeks ago. Use that lesson to help you fix the problem.

Closeable Opportunities that Pushed

Were there closeable pipeline opportunities that simply pushed into this month? Make sure you’re on top of them so they don’t vanish for good. But also make sure you have the pipe to cover this month, so you’re not solely depending on last month’s leftovers.

Shortcutting the Sales Process

Is it possible that you might have been skipping steps in the sales process? This will often happen when you are in a desperate and stressed emotional state. This is a big clue that it is time to get back to the basics and fundamentals of selling— and get disciplined about following a proven sales process.

This may be a very good time to take some courses on Sales Gravy University and read (or listen) to books like Sales EQ that can help you dial in your sales process.

Recommit to Your Sales Goals

We all slip. We all make mistakes. Discipline can waver, especially once the initial excitement of a new year fades. But you have the power to step back into your resolutions and do the daily work required to achieve your goals.

Whether you crushed it, coasted, or crashed, the key to getting February off to a strong start is to recommit.

Make the decision — say it out loud: “I’m going to be better in February than I was in January.”

Need help setting winning Sales Goals? Check out our FREE Goal Planning Guide

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Why Founder-Led Sales Teams Struggle to Scale Jan 29, 2026

Show notes

“Buyers want a machine, a sales machine, not a mystery. If the sales machine only works because of the founder, it’s not that valuable. It’s actually quite risky.”

Chris Spratling, founder of Chalkhill Blue Limited and author of The Exit Roadmap, shared this on a recent episode of the Sales Gravy podcast. He works with business owners preparing to sell their companies, helping them get operations, finances, and sales engines ready for new ownership. That insight cuts straight to the reason so many founder-led businesses hit a ceiling they can’t break through.

If you are a founder who still carries most of the revenue, or you have a founder-led sales team that depends on you to close critical deals, this is bigger than exit planning. It determines whether your business can grow beyond your personal capacity.

The Golden Handcuffs Problem

You built the business. You know the product better than anyone. You can sell it without thinking.

That is exactly where the risk starts.

When major clients only trust you, when your sales process lives in your head, when new reps struggle to replicate what comes naturally to you, you aren’t running a sales operation. You are running a one-person engine with a support team around it.

Spratling calls this the “golden handcuffs.” It looks like success from the outside, but underneath, it creates dependency. Every time you step in to save a deal, you reinforce the idea that the business only works when you are involved.

Most founders focus on how this affects valuation at exit. Fewer recognize the more immediate cost. That dependency limits how fast the company can grow right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEBLyaOy9XQ

Where Founder-Led Sales Breaks Down

The transition from founder-led sales to a functioning team is where momentum often stalls.

You hire your first salesperson. They do well. Then a second. Then a third. Suddenly, deals slow down, messaging gets inconsistent, and you find yourself pulled back into conversations you thought you had delegated.

They don’t sell the way you do. They miss cues you catch instinctively. They hesitate where you would push forward. So you jump in, coach through objections, and close deals yourself.

What feels like instinct is actually a method you developed through hundreds of conversations. The problem isn’t that your team lacks talent, but that your approach has never been translated into something they can use without you standing next to them.

As long as that stays true, scale will remain out of reach.

Turning Intuition Into a Usable Process

The hardest shift for founder-led teams is codifying what the founder does without thinking.

You know which deals are worth pursuing. You know when to apply pressure and when to step back. You know how to redirect a conversation when resistance shows up. That knowledge is pattern recognition built over time, and it can be used to create a process.

Start by defining how deals actually move through your pipeline. Not a generic framework pulled from a template, but the real stages your customers pass through, with clear criteria for each transition. What has to be true before a lead is qualified? What information must be present before a proposal goes out?

Then look at discovery. What questions do you ask every time? What do you listen for before positioning your solution? Which objections show up consistently, and how do you respond when they do?

The goal is to document the structure beneath the conversations so that someone else can navigate the same terrain with confidence.

Why Your CRM Is Not Pulling Its Weight

Most founder-led teams have a CRM, but they only use it to track contacts and deal size.

However, a functioning, high-performing sales system treats the CRM as a learning tool. That means capturing more than surface-level data. It means recording what buyers actually say, why deals move forward, where they stall, and who influences the decision.

When that information is tracked consistently, patterns become visible. You see which prospects convert fastest, which objections actually kill deals, and where momentum typically breaks down.

That insight does more than improve forecasting. It gives you a concrete way to train new reps based on real deals you have closed, not abstract theory.

Three Steps to Build a Sales Engine That Does Not Depend on You

The objective isn’t to remove yourself from sales completely. It’s to make your involvement a choice rather than a requirement.

Step 1: Define Clear Qualification Criteria

Your team needs to know which leads are worth pursuing and which ones are a waste of time. If you’re constantly redirecting their focus, you haven’t defined “good fit” clearly enough. Get specific—industry, company size, buying triggers, decision-making structure.

Step 2: Create Documented Playbooks

How do you handle discovery? What’s your approach to proposals? How do you navigate the closing process? Your team needs a framework they can adapt. Think decision trees, not scripts. “If they say X, then ask Y. If they push back on Z, here’s how to reframe it.”

Step 3: Transfer Client Relationships

If every major client relationship is tied to you personally, your business is fragile. Start introducing your team into those relationships now. Bring them to calls. Have them lead the follow-up. Shift trust from you as an individual to your company as a whole.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Record your next three sales conversations, with the customer’s permission. Review them carefully. Note the questions you asked, when you asked them, and how you responded to resistance. Identify what made you confident that the opportunity was real.

Turn those insights into a simple framework your team can follow. Have them use it. Watch where it works and where it breaks. Refine based on what you see.

Done consistently, this process creates a system new hires can step into within months. It won’t make them identical to you, but it will make them effective without constant rescue.

The Real Test

You will know your found-led sales team has scaled when you can step away for two weeks without monitoring email, chat messages, or “quick calls” with prospects.

And when you come back, the pipeline has moved forward.

If that thought terrifies you, you don’t have a sales team. You have an expensive support staff for your one-person operation.

Building a sales operation that runs without you isn’t about making yourself irrelevant. It’s about making your business transferable and scalable, whether you’re planning an exit in three years or just trying to grow past your own capacity right now.

Because at some point, your ability to personally close deals stops being your greatest asset and starts being your biggest bottleneck.

The question is whether you’ll recognize that point before it costs you the next stage of growth.

If you want to start turning founder intuition into a repeatable sales system, download our free Small Business Guide to Sales Training. It walks through the frameworks that help teams scale without depending on a single closer.

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