Article • 11 min read
75 motivational sales quotes to galvanise you into action
Whether you're in need of encouragement to meet your sales goals or comforting words after losing a deal, these inspirational quotes will reignite your fire.
Last updated May 27, 2021
On your journey to sales greatness, a little inspiration is necessary at times. Whether you’re struggling to meet your targets, feeling down after a harsh rejection or finding it difficult to focus, a few encouraging sales quotes can help you power through those challenging days.
So we’ve compiled our favourite sales quotes to motivate you from the likes of Zig Ziglar, Jeffrey Gitomer, Richard Branson, Jill Konrath and more – all categorised by common obstacles salespeople face:
Productivity sales quotes for knocking out sales tasks
Thoughtful sales quotes for turning your attention toward the customer
Supportive sales quotes for handling lost deals
Motivational sales quotes for meeting goals
After reading these inspiring sales quotes, you should feel energised to complete your daily responsibilities, build strong relationships with potential customers, confidently tackle lost deals and knock your quotas out of the park.
It’s not always easy to be productive in sales because there are so many tasks to juggle – finding leads, following up with prospects and scheduling demos, just to name a few. Here are some sales quotes on productivity that’ll help you reevaluate how you’re spending your time and directing your focus.
“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar
“If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one.” – Jack Ma
“Today is always the most productive day of your week.” – Mark Hunter
“Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is home because she figured out a faster way.” – Jason Fried
“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John Wooden
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Every choice you make has an end result.” – Zig Ziglar
“I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took an excuse.” – Florence Nightingale
“The first part of success is ‘Get-to-it-iveness’, the second part of success is ‘Stick-to-it-iveness.’” – Orison Swett Marden
“Without hustle, your talent will only get you so far.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort.” – Paul J. Meyer
- “Either run the day or the day runs you.” – Jim Rohn
With these sales quotes as your guide, find ways to be more efficient with your time and close more deals. Use tools to organise and manage sales data, automate follow-up emails and work closely with marketing to find quality leads.
When you’re trying to make a sale, it can be easy to lose sight of the customer’s needs and push too hard. You then risk losing that potential customer. Work on becoming a customer-centric sales rep by drawing inspiration from these sales quotes.
“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
“The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.” – Dale Carnegie
“Stop selling. Start helping.” – Zig Ziglar
“Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do.” – Mark Zuckerberg
“If you work just for money, you’ll never make it. But if you love what you are doing and always put the customer first, success will be yours.” – Ray Kroc
“Always deliver more than expected.” – Larry Page
“Your competition is everything else your prospect could conceivably spend their money on.” – Don Cooper
“People don’t ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.” – Robert Keith Leavitt
“The best sales questions have your expertise wrapped into them.” – Jill Konrath
“A mediocre person tells. A good person explains. A superior person demonstrates. A great person inspires others to see for themselves.” – Harvey Mackay
“Talk to unhappy customers.” – Linda Sanford
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” – Steve Jobs
“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
“People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” – Zig Ziglar
“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” – Stephen R. Covey
“You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar
“It’s not hard sell, it’s heart sell. Good questions get to the heart of the problem/need/situation very quickly – without the buyer feeling like he or she is being pushed.” – Jeffrey Gitomer
“You don’t close a sale; you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” – Patricia Fripp
“You have to drop your sales mentality and start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you.” – Jill Konrath
Potential customers want to know that you care about them – not that you only want to make money. The above sales quotes to motivate people can serve as reminders to keep consumers and their needs top of mind.
Prospects often have reasons why they can’t purchase your product or service. ‘It’s too expensive’ and ‘Our company needs X, Y and Z features’ are two particularly common sales objections. And sometimes, no matter what you say to prospects an objection can turn into a rejection, adding another deal to your ‘lost’ pile. Here are a few sales quotes to help you move past these discouraging times.
“Business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another one coming.” – Richard Branson
“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalise on what comes.” – Zig Ziglar
“The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.” – Sergey Brin
“Managing objections head on is dead on.” – Kraig Kleeman
“The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.” – Warren Buffett
“If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.” – Zig Ziglar
“I will not lose, for even in defeat, there’s a valuable lesson learned, so it evens up for me.” – Jay-Z
“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” – Og Mandino
“Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
“Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” – Zig Ziglar
“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” – Richard Branson
“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” – Johnny Cash
“Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect.” – William Clement Stone
"If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit." – Bill Clinton
“In sales there are going to be times when you can’t make everyone happy. Don’t expect to and you won’t be disappointed. Just do your best for each client in each situation as it arises. Then learn from each situation how to do it better the next time.” – Tom Hopkins
“Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity of more business.” – Zig Ziglar
“The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.” – Barack Obama
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” – Elon Musk
“I just try to learn from every mistake that I make so that I never make them again.” – Patrick Mahomes
“I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity.” – Oprah Winfrey
“Remember that failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.” – Zig Ziglar
Lost deals are a part of life for any sales rep – but that doesn’t always mean they’re easy to swallow. As these sales quotes imply, learn from sales objections and apply these lessons to future customer conversations.
Crunching to meet your quota this quarter? Breaking down your sales goals into smaller, manageable tasks is an effective strategy for hitting targets. For an extra boost, here are some sales quotes to motivate you to crush your sales goals.
“Life’s battles don’t always go to the strongest or fastest; sooner or later those who win are those who think they can.” – Jill Konrath
“You cannot fail if you resolutely determine that you will not.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Forget about the business outlook… be on the outlook for business.” – Paul J. Meyer
“Excellence is not a skill, it’s an attitude.” – Ralph Marston
“When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars, people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’. That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.” – Elon Musk
“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” – Zig Ziglar
“To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new.” – Bill Gates
“Always be closing… that doesn’t mean you’re always closing the deal, but it does mean that you need to be always closing on the next step in the process.” – Shane Gibson
“There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.” – Michael Phelps
“Goals aren’t enough. You need goals plus deadlines: goals big enough to get excited about and deadlines to make you run. One isn’t much good without the other, but together they can be tremendous.” – Ben Feldman
“Try to turn every disaster into an opportunity.” – John D. Rockefeller
“Fear is the destroyer of dreams and the killer of ambitions.” – Jeffrey Benjamin
“I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it and I sell it hard.” – Estée Lauder
“Take more chances than you dare. You’ll make more sales than you expect. That’s the formula.” – Jeffrey Gitomer
- “Confidence and enthusiasm are the greatest sales producers in any kind of economy.”
– OB Smith “When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.” – Zig Ziglar
“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excited you.” – Oprah Winfrey
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” – Vince Lombardi
“Success is the culmination of failures, mistakes, false starts, confusion and the determination to keep going anyway.” – Nick Gleason
“The difference between ‘try’ and ‘triumph’ is just a little ‘umph’!" – Marvin Phillips
“If you don’t see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner.” – Zig Ziglar
Meeting sales quotas is often overwhelming, especially when you’re on a tight deadline. Whether you’re trying to complete weekly, monthly or quarterly goals, get energised with the sales quotes to motivate you above. You’ve got this!
Thrive in your sales career with these sales quotes
Sales is a rewarding career, but it isn’t without obstacles or periods of overwhelm. Potential customers won’t always want what you’re selling, major deals will fall through and you might not meet your quota every quarter.
Use inspirational sales quotes to help push you through when the going gets tough. They can provide some much-needed motivation and reignite your drive to continue selling.
