75 motivational sales quotes to galvanise you into action

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.

1. “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar
2. “If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one.” – Jack Ma
3. “Today is always the most productive day of your week.” – Mark Hunter
4. “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
5. “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John Wooden
6. “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” – Theodore Roosevelt
7. “Every choice you make has an end result.” – Zig Ziglar
8. “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took an excuse.” – Florence Nightingale
9. “The first part of success is ‘Get-to-it-iveness’, the second part of success is ‘Stick-to-it-iveness.’” – Orison Swett Marden
10. “Without hustle, your talent will only get you so far.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
11. “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort.” – Paul J. Meyer
12. “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.

1. “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
2. “The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.” – Dale Carnegie
3. “Stop selling. Start helping.” – Zig Ziglar
4. “Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do.” – Mark Zuckerberg
5. “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
6. “Always deliver more than expected.” – Larry Page
7. “Your competition is everything else your prospect could conceivably spend their money on.” – Don Cooper
8. “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
9. “The best sales questions have your expertise wrapped into them.” – Jill Konrath
10. “A mediocre person tells. A good person explains. A superior person demonstrates. A great person inspires others to see for themselves.” – Harvey Mackay
11. “Talk to unhappy customers.” – Linda Sanford
12. “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
13. “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
14. “People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” – Zig Ziglar
15. “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
16. “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar
17. “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
18. “You don’t close a sale; you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” – Patricia Fripp
19. “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.

1. “Business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another one coming.” – Richard Branson
2. “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalise on what comes.” – Zig Ziglar
3. “The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.” – Sergey Brin
4. “Managing objections head on is dead on.” – Kraig Kleeman
5. “The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.” – Warren Buffett
6. “If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.” – Zig Ziglar
7. “I will not lose, for even in defeat, there’s a valuable lesson learned, so it evens up for me.” – Jay-Z
8. “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” – Og Mandino
9. “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
10. “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” – Zig Ziglar
11. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” – Richard Branson
12. “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
13. “Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect.” – William Clement Stone
14. "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
15. “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
16. “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
17. “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
18. “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” – Elon Musk
19. “I just try to learn from every mistake that I make so that I never make them again.” – Patrick Mahomes
20. “I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity.” – Oprah Winfrey
21. “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.

1. “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
2. “You cannot fail if you resolutely determine that you will not.” – Abraham Lincoln
3. “Forget about the business outlook… be on the outlook for business.” – Paul J. Meyer
4. “Excellence is not a skill, it’s an attitude.” – Ralph Marston
5. “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
6. “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” – Zig Ziglar
7. “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
8. “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
9. “There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.” – Michael Phelps
10. “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
11. “Try to turn every disaster into an opportunity.” – John D. Rockefeller
12. “Fear is the destroyer of dreams and the killer of ambitions.” – Jeffrey Benjamin
13. “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
14. “Take more chances than you dare. You’ll make more sales than you expect. That’s the formula.” – Jeffrey Gitomer
15. “Confidence and enthusiasm are the greatest sales producers in any kind of economy.”
    – OB Smith
16. “When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.” – Zig Ziglar
17. “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excited you.” – Oprah Winfrey
18. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs
19. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
20. “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” – Vince Lombardi
21. “Success is the culmination of failures, mistakes, false starts, confusion and the determination to keep going anyway.” – Nick Gleason
22. “The difference between ‘try’ and ‘triumph’ is just a little ‘umph’!" – Marvin Phillips
23. “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!