121 Inspirational Sales Quotes To Motivate Your Team

1. “Turns out the ability to ask insightful, thought-provoking questions was the single biggest differentiator between top performers and average reps.” –Jill Konrath Tweet: “Turns out the ability to ask insightful, thought-provoking questions was the single biggest differentiator between top performers and average reps.” – Jill Konrath, via @cfsplaybook

2. “If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.” – T. Harv Eker

3. Identify what connects you with other human beings rather than what separates you from them. Sales are about understanding the challenges a customer faces, empathizing with them, and building connections.

4. “Merely satisfying customers will not be enough to earn their loyalty. Instead, they must experience exceptional service worthy of their repeat business and referral. Understand the factors that drive this customer revolution.” – Rick Tate

5. “Willpower is a finite resource in every person’s day – if a work environment contains elements that further promote distraction, rep productivity could be drained even faster.” – Peter Zink

6. “The best salespeople wonder what it would be like to be in the other person’s shoes. They know they can’t play that game unless they continually strive to train themselves in how we as human beings communicate.” — Bob Phibbs.

7. “Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.” – Tim Ferriss

8. “Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win.” – Jeffrey GitomerGreat salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win Jeffrey Gitomer

9. “In 2021, over 3 billion people will use social media. Your social strategy should complement your on-site sales rather than stand-alone. In short, you need effective on-site integration of various social media platforms to seal the deal with social customers.” – Brent Barnhart

10. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

11. “Grit, in a word, is stamina. But it’s not just stamina in your effort. It’s also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you’re not really going to get anywhere. You’ll never become an expert.” – Angela Duckworth

12. Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday. -Wilma Rudolph

13. “One of the best predictors of ultimate success … isn’t natural talent or even industry expertise, but how you explain your failures and rejections.” — Daniel H. Pink.

14. “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

15. “Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.”

16. “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle – when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.” – Christopher McDougall

17. “Leaders foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships. They strengthen others by increasing self-determination and developing competence.” – Deb Calvert

18. “The one thing you’re putting off or dreading? That’s your brain telling you it’s the thing you need to do most and next. Get it done. Stop dreading. Do.“ — Nancy Nardin.

19. “Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

20. “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.” -Daniel Pink

21. “It is not your customer’s job to remember you. It is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you.” – Patricia Fripp

22. “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for fewer problems, wish for more skills. And Don’t wish for fewer challenges, wish for more wisdom. For things to change, you have to change.” – Jim Rohn

23. “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” Frank Herbert.

24. “Having the aspiration to be memorable is easy. The hard part is creating a crisp message you want others to articulate when you’re no longer in the room.” – Dr. Carmen Simon, Cognitive Neuroscientist, Memzy

25. “True productivity comes from allowing yourself to make mistakes. Do so, and you’ll succeed more often than any ten perfectionists.” – Laura Stack, CEO, The Productivity Pro

26. “Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you would rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, drive through the other barrier. And after you have done that, do it again the next time.” – Seth Godin

27. “You don’t need a big close, as many sales reps believe. You risk losing your customer when you save all the good stuff for the end. Keep the customer actively involved throughout your presentation and watch your results improve.” – Harvey Mackay

28. “Repainting your house the same color it already was feels like a waste. It’s a lot of effort merely to keep things as they are. But if you don’t do it, time and entropy kick in, and the house starts to fade. The same can be said for 1,000 elements of your organization, including your relationships with customers, staff, suppliers, and technology. The way you approach your market, the skill you bring to your craft, the culture in your organization—it constantly needs another coat of paint. Rust never sleeps.”- Seth Godin

29. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” — Amelia Earhart.

30. “All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find it was in vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.” – T.E. Lawrence

31. “You don’t need a big close, as many sales reps believe. You risk losing your customers when you save all the good stuff for the end. Keep the customer actively involved throughout the presentation, and watch your results improve.” – Harvey MacKay

32. “The top salespeople are usually the ones with the most activity; it doesn’t guarantee you will close more deals, but if you have no activity, you won’t be closing any deals.” – Colleen Honan, Chief Sales Officer, Brainshark

33. “Filter everything you’re doing, saying and pitching through the customer point of view, and you’ll improve just about every metric you care about today.” – Matt Heinz

34. “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe” ―Simon Sinek, Author of Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Tweet: “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe” ― Simon Sinek, via @cfsplaybook

35. “The focus from years of negative conditioning is to look at weaknesses or talents ranked lower instead of focusing on those strengths or talents ranked higher. To increase sales leadership we must begin with knowing one’s talents not one’s weaknesses.” – Leanne Hoagland-Smith, Chief Results Officer, Advanced Systems

36. “Work like someone is actively trying to take everything away from you. Like someone else is using there 24 hours in a day to take away everything you are working for.” – Mark Cuban

37. “Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.” – Les Brown

38. “Train your prospects to pay attention and to open and read emails that you send. Don’t encourage them to ignore or delete your messages because they are of inconsistent or no value to them.” – Bridget Gleason

39. “If your sales have tanked, maybe the issue is not your lack of sales skills, but you are rushing the knowing and trusting aspects of the buying process.” – Leanne Hoagland-Smith

40. “I got lucky because I never gave up the search. Are you quitting too soon? Or are you willing to pursue luck with a vengeance too?” –Jill Konrath Tweet: “I got lucky because I never gave up the search. Are you quitting too soon? Or are you willing to pursue luck with a vengeance too? – Jill Konrath, via @cfsplaybook

41. “You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. You don’t have to rely on luck or getting a better territory. You just have to plan your work and work your plan. It works every time it’s tried.” – Kelly Riggs

42. “The greatest only become the greatest because they are willing to expose themselves to people who can help them become better. Your goal is to find those around who can and will do just that for you.” – Mark Hunter, sales speaker and trainer, The Sales Hunter

43. “Sales is an outcome, not a goal. It’s a function of doing numerous things right, starting from the moment you target a potential prospect until you finalize the deal.” – Jill Konrath

44. “Successful people are 100% convinced that they are masters of their own destiny, they’re not creatures of circumstance, they create circumstance, if the circumstances around them suck they change them.”

45. “Most people think ‘selling’ is the same as ‘talking’. But the most effective salespeople know that listening is the most important part of their job.” – Roy Bartell

46. “To be seen as a credible and trusted advisor, every touch you have with a customer should provide added value.” – Sharon Gillenwater, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Boardroom Insiders

47. “Win by a nose, most sales aren’t won because of some huge difference in product, sales pitch, etc; it is usually won by some marginal difference.” – Brian Tracy, The Psychology of Selling

48. “There have been so many people who have said to me, ‘You can’t do that,’ but I’ve had an innate belief that they were wrong. Be unwavering and relentless in your approach.” –Halle Berry

49. “Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.”- Zig Ziglar

50. “Act as if! Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and then you’ll surely become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence and then people will surely have confidence in you. Act as if you have unmatched experience and then people will follow your advice. And act as if you are already a tremendous success, and as sure as I stand here today – you will become successful.”

51. “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.” -Maya Angelou

52. “Don’t settle for average. Bring your best to the moment. Then, whether it fails or succeeds, at least you know you gave all you had. We need to live the best that’s in us.” -Angela Bassett

53. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process, is its own reward. -Amelia Earhart

54. “I design, manufacture, distribute, and sell elevator buttons. I specialize in the fourth floor. And I don’t mean to brag, but I’m such a good salesman that I could sell one of my fourth-floor elevator buttons to the owner of a three-story building.” – Jarod Kintz

55. “The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn entails that the knowledge was achieved on one’s own accord — it feels great — but to be taught often leaves a feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop.” – Criss Jami

56. “Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.” –Napoleon Hill, Author of Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude Tweet: “Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.” – Napoleon Hill, via @cfsplaybook

57. “Sales is an outcome, not a goal. It’s a function of doing numerous things right, starting from the moment you target a potential prospect until you finalize the deal.” — Jill Konrath.

58. “Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.” –W. Clement Stone, Author of The Success System that Never Fails Tweet: “Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman - not the attitude of the prospect.” – W. Clement Stone, via @cfsplaybook

59. “The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is living fully and just existing.” –Michael Gerber, Author of The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It Tweet: “The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is living fully and just existing.” – Michael Gerber, via @cfsplaybook

60. “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.” -James C. Collins, Author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don't Tweet: “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.” - James C. Collins, via @cfsplaybook

61. “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” -Norman Vincent Peale, Author of The Power of Positive Thinking Tweet: “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” - Norman Vincent Peale, via @cfsplaybook

62. “Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” — Mark Twain

63. “The focus from years of negative conditioning is to look at weaknesses or talents ranked lower instead of focusing on those strengths or talents ranked higher. To increase sales leadership we must begin with knowing one’s talents, not one’s weaknesses.” – Leanne Hoagland-Smith

64. “Refuse to attach a negative meaning to the word ‘no.’ View it as feedback. ‘No’ tells you to change your approach, create more value or try again later.” – Anthony Iannarino

65. The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but on significance — and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning. –Oprah Winfrey

66. “Far too often, salespeople get ahead of the prospect. They predict a close date based on their quota instead of on the prospect’s needs. The only way to know when a deal will close is to ask the customer.” – Alice Heiman

67. People who wonder if the glass is half empty or full miss the point. The glass is refillable. Don’t stop trying to close that deal, no matter how many setbacks you face.

68. “I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight.” – U.S. Navy SEALs credo

69. “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sail. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

70. “The major difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that the former look for problems to resolve, whereas the latter make every attempt to avoid them.” – Grant Cardone

71. “The major difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that the former look for problems to resolve, whereas the latter make every attempt to avoid them.” — Grant Cardone.

72. “Grit, in a word, is stamina. But it’s not just stamina in your effort. It’s also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you’re not really going to get anywhere. You’ll never become an expert.” — Angela Duckworth.

73. “Willpower is a finite resource in every person’s day – if a work environment contains elements that further promote distraction, rep productivity could be drained even faster.” – Peter Zink, Director, Sales Training and Enablement, Forrester Research

74. “For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger.

75. “You don’t have to be an expert… As long as you know significantly more than the person you are teaching or providing value to, then your level of knowledge is probably sufficient.” – MyWifeQuitHerJob

76. “The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.” – Henry Ford

77. I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them. -Madam C.J. Walker

78. “An empowered buyer is exactly what a sales and marketing organization should be targeting. Sales and marketing should unite to determine who their ideal customer is and how to reveal their latent pain and to move the customer to a place where they are more successful because of the product or service being offered.” – Claudine Bianchi

79. No matter how many customers you have, each is an individual. The day you start thinking of them as this amorphous ‘collection’ and stop thinking of them as people is the day you start going out of business. -Dharmesh Shah

80. “I think that power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.” – Robert Downey Jr.

81. “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson

82. “Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, drive through the other barrier. And after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.” – Seth Godin

83. “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

84. “Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles, and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident, and more and more successful.” – Mark Victor Hansen

85. “The best salespeople wonder what it would be like to be in the other person’s shoes. They know they can’t play that game unless they continually strive to train themselves in how we as human beings communicate.” – Bob Phibbs

86. You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you. -Maya Angelou

87. “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

88. “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.”

89. “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.”- Daniel Pink

90. “Selling is really about having conversations with people and helping improve their company or their life. If you look at it like that, selling is a very admirable thing to do.” – Lori Richardson

91. “One of the best predictors of ultimate success … isn’t natural talent or even industry expertise, but how you explain your failures and rejections.” – Daniel H. Pink

92. “The new reality is that sales and marketing are continuously and increasingly integrated. Marketing needs to know more about sales, sales needs to know more about marketing, and we all need to know more about our customers.” – Jill Rowley

93. “Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.” – Mary Kay Ash

94. “Great sellers go into a meeting with multiple next-steps; this allows them to proactively respond if a plan does not unfold as planned.” – Tibor Shanto, Chief Sales Officer, Renbor Sales Solutions

95. “Be an example. Are you prompt? Are you professional? Are you engaged? As sales leaders, we have to set the bar high for ourselves as well as our teams.” – Lori Richardson

96. “Sales enablement can’t be reactive. It has to be a full-blown strategy that’s woven into the fabric of the company.” – Roderick Jefferson, CEO, Roderick Jefferson & Associates

97. “No amount of pre-call planning is going to help close business if you aren’t able to ask for what you need in order to conduct business. It’s a classic case of working on the wrong end of the problem.” – Colleen Stanley

98. “Refuse to attach a negative meaning to the word ‘no.’ View it as feedback. ‘No’ tells you to change your approach, create more value or try again later.” – Anthony Iannarino, best-selling author and keynote speaker

99. Don't settle for average. Bring your best to the moment. Then, whether it fails or succeeds, at least you know you gave all you had. We need to live the best that's in us. -Angela Bassett

100. “Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” – Golda Meir

101. “Winning is great, sure, but the secret is learning how to lose. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday” – Wilma Rudolph

102. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” – Marianne Williamson

103. “The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” –Stephen Covey, Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change Tweet: “The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen Covey, via @cfsplaybook

104. “It is the cold that is dead – not the calling… I agree that no one should be “cold” calling anymore – meaning having a name & number, but lacking a compelling reason to call.” – Trish Bertuzzi

105. “No matter how many customers you have, each is an individual. The day you start thinking of them as this amorphous ‘collection’ and stop thinking of them as people is the day you start going out of business.” -Dharmesh Shah

106. “Customers don’t care at all whether you close the deal or not. They care about improving their business. It’s easy to forget this in the heat of a sales cycle.” – Aaron Ross

107. “Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.” –Charles Duhigg, Author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business Tweet: “Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.” – Charles Duhigg, via @cfsplaybook

108. “There is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the clients some stock or he sells you on a reason why he can’t. Either way, a sale is made. The only question is, “who’s gonna close?” You or him. And be relentless.”

109. “It's a wonderful thing to be optimistic. It keeps you healthy and it keeps you resilient.” –Daniel Kahneman, Author of Thinking, Fast and Slow Tweet: “It's a wonderful thing to be optimistic. It keeps you healthy and it keeps you resilient.” – Daniel Kahneman, via @cfsplaybook

110. “Today, the salesperson isn’t the sole conduit of information to the firms. If the buyer has a poor experience with a seller, they’ll simply move onto the next channel.” – Mary Shea, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

111. “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.” — Daniel Pink.

112. There have been so many people who have said to me, ‘You can’t do that,’ but I’ve had an innate belief that they were wrong. Be unwavering and relentless in your approach. –Halle Berry

113. “Most people think SELLING is the same as TALKING. But the most effective salespeople know that LISTENING is the most important part of their job.” – Roy Bartell

114. “The first impression is the last impression. The way you show them yourself that you are in the moment. That you are present with them will dictate how the relationship goes. The way you dress, the way you shake their hand or hug them, the way you make them feel is all more important than you think.” – Ryan Serhant

115. “Our business development team can now send hundreds of emails a day directly (and automatically) from our CRM without lifting a finger. monday.com CRM has opened countless doors of opportunities that we never had before.”

116. “The one thing you’re putting off or dreading? That’s your brain telling you it’s the thing you need to do most and next. Get it done. Stop dreading. Do.“ – Nancy Nardin

117. “If you are going to do something truly innovative, you have to be someone who does not value social approval. You can't need social approval to go forward. Otherwise, how would you ever do the thing that you are doing?” –Malcolm Gladwell Tweet: “If you are going to do something truly innovative, you have to be someone who does not value social approval. You can't need social approval to go forward. Otherwise, how would you ever do the thing that you are doing?” – Malcolm Gladwell, via @cfsplaybook

118. “People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

119. “You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. You don’t have to rely on luck or getting a better territory. You just have to plan your work and work your plan. It works every time it’s tried.” – Kelly Riggs, Founder & President, The Business LockerRoom

120. “It is not the feelings that influence the actions. It is the actions that influence the feelings.” –David Sandler Tweet: “It is not the feelings that influence the actions. It is the actions that influence the feelings.” – David Sandler, via @cfsplaybook

121. Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives. -Daniel Pink