Motivational Sales Quotes to Inspire You



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Sales is a challenging vocation. But if you keep yourself and your team fired up, the rewards can be awesome.

So how do you get motivated? Is it with upbeat music? Or some exercise? Maybe a few words of praise?

How about some motivational sales quotes to inspire success!

Success is dependent on the drive and attitude of each individual salesperson. Even the most self-confident salesperson occasionally feels down due to a lost sale or pressure to meet quotas.

Motivation is key to thriving in today’s fast-paced, demanding world of sales.  And this collection of motivational sales quotes will give you the inspiration to keep going.  So if you manage a sales team, a sales quote might just be what’s needed to get everyone moving in the right direction.



Motivational Sales Quotes

There’s a lot of good advice for salespeople that comes in the form of a motivational quote. These business professionals quoted below offer gems of inspiration.



  • Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her to solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service. ~ Brian Tracy (Author)
  • Keep the customer actively involved throughout your presentation, and watch your results improve. ~ Harvey Mackay (Businessman) 
  • Your competition is everything else your prospect could conceivably spend their money on. ~ Don Cooper (Seminar host)
  • When you’re coaching your sales reps, make sure your feedback is timely, consistent, objective, accurate, individualized and relevant. ~ Barry Trailer (Co-founder, CSO Insights)
  • Don’t sell life insurance. Sell what life insurance can do. ~ Ben Feldman (Businessman)
  • All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like and trust. ~ Bob Burg (Author)
  • If you are not moving closer to what you want in sales (or in life), you probably aren’t doing enough asking. ~ Jack Canfield (Author)
  • To build a long-term, successful enterprise, when you don’t close a sale, open a relationship. ~ Patricia Fripp (Speaker) 
  • Make a customer, not a sale. ~ Katherine Barchetti (Founder, K. Barchetti Shops)
  • Why not create a welcome video from the CEO or a founder just for new sales reps? Make hearing the why both personal and motivating at the same time. ~ Trish Bertuzzi, (President, The Bridge Group)

Quotes for Overcoming Stress

Working in sales can be stressful. Because there are a variety of pressures heightening tension at any given moment. So if you suffer from sales related stress, these motivational sales quotes can help you battle through the anxiety.

  • The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking. ~ Wayne Dyer (Author)
  • All progress takes place outside the comfort zone. ~ Michael John Bobak (Contemporary artist)
  • You know you are running a modern sales team when selling feels more like the relationship between a doctor and a patient and less like a relationship between a salesperson and a prospect. ~ Mark Roberge (SVP Sales and Services, HubSpot)
  • Opportunities don’t happen. You create them. ~ Chris Grosser (Speaker)
  • In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive. ~ Lee Lacocca (Former CEO, Chrysler Corporation)
  • The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt (Former President of the US)
  • The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. ~ Vince Lombardi (Football coach)
  • There is incredible power in leading with research and leading with relevance. ~ Kraig Kleeman, (Author)
  • Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life. ~ Marilu Henner (Actress)

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Positive Attitude Quotes

Maintaining a positive attitude is a crucial part of being a successful salesperson. The customer has to believe that YOU believe in what you’re selling. Below are motivational sales quotes that demonstrate the importance of attitude.

  • Either you run the day or the day runs you. ~ Jim Rohn (Author)
  • Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect. ~ William Clement Stone (Author)
  • 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 (Founder, Estée Lauder Cosmetics Inc.)
  • I studied a housewife’s needs and we made a brush for every need. ~ Alfred Fuller (Founder, Fuller Brush Company)
  • 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 (Sales thought leader)
  • The same wind blows on us all. What matters is not the blowing of the wind but the set of the sail. ~ Jim Rohn (Author)
  • The difference between enchantment and simple sales is that with enchantment you have the other person’s best interests at heart, too. ~ Guy Kawasaki (Venture capitalist)
  • Sales-driven cultures can really differentiate you from the majority of your competition. That doesn’t mean being salesperson oriented, just sales oriented: winning deals, smelling the blood and going in for the kill. ~ Josh James (CEO, Domo)
  • You have to generate revenue as efficiently as possible. And to do that, you must create a data-driven sales culture. Data trumps intuition. ~ Dave Elkington (CEO and founder, Inside Sales)
  • Lead TO what makes you unique, not WITH what makes you unique. ~ Matt Dixon (Author)

Sales Quotes to Remember

These are some motivational sales quotes that are worth keeping in mind. Especially in those moments when attempting to convert a customer. So always remember these great phrases.



  • Today is always the most productive day of your week. ~ Mark Hunter (Author)
  • 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 (Author)
  • The best salespeople know that their expertise can become their enemy in selling. At the moment they are tempted to tell the buyer what “he needs to do,” they instead offer a story about a peer of the buyer. ~ Mike Bosworth (Author)
  • In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity. ~ Albert Einstein (Theoretical Physicist)
  • Prospecting: find the man with the problem. ~ Ben Friedman (Marketing professional)
  • Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time. ~ Thomas Edison (Inventor)
  • Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try. ~ Jack Canfield (Author)
  • The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. ~ Thomas Paine (Political activist)
  • Nobody likes to be sold to, but everybody likes to buy. ~ Earl Taylor (Real estate broker)
  • There’s no lotion or potion that will make sales faster and easier for you – unless your potion is hard work. ~ Jeffery Gitomer (Author)

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Quotes To Overcome Fear

Being a good salesperson requires a lot of hard work and different skills. It can be intimidating. These motivational sales quotes will help you overcome your fear.

  • Sales is not about selling anymore but building trust and educating. ~ Siva Devaki (Founder, Mansa Systems)
  • Develop training modules. Celebrate successes. Share social-selling best practices throughout your entire company. And track the results. ~ Liz Gelb-O’Connor (VP Inside Sales Strategy & Growth, ADP)
  • Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. ~ John D. Rockefeller (Business magnate)
  • Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. ~ Anais Nin (American-Cuban-French essayist)
  • The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. ~ Amelia Earhart (Aviation pioneer)
  • We generate fears while we sit. We overcome them by action. ~ Dr. Henry Link (Author)
  • I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done. ~ Lucille Ball (Actress)
  • If you’re doing prospecting, it’s not profitable to focus on smaller customers. Your ideal outbound customer should represent the largest revenue size or opportunity you can find that you can likely win. ~ Aaron Ross (Author)
  • Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. ~ Thomas Jefferson (Former President of the US)
  • Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. ~ George Addair (Real estate developer)

Quotes to Kick-Start Your Sales Career

Perseverance is key to success. But even the best of us struggle when experiencing hard times. Below we offer up some excellent motivational quotes to kick-start your sales career.

  • What differentiates sellers today is their ability to bring fresh ideas. ~ Jill Konrath (Author)
  • The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. ~ Walt Disney (Entrepreneur)
  • The secret of getting ahead is getting started. ~ Mark Twain (Writer)
  • When you have a multi-tiered sales effort, the first thing you want to do is understand the market. You want to go out there and map the competitive landscape. You want to know what your customers are saying. ~ Brian Frank (Global Head of Sales Operations, LinkedIn)
  • Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. ~ Tony Robbins (Author)
  • Sales 2.0 is a combination of the data, science, metrics and predictability that inside sales has always been known for combined with the art of really getting close to our customers and understanding what they are facing in their businesses. ~ Anneke Seley (Founder, Reality Works)
  • A goal is a dream with a deadline. ~ Napolean Hill (Self-help author)
  • If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on. ~ Sheryl Sandberg (COO, Facebook)
  • It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results. ~ Warren Buffett (CEO, Berkshire Hathaway)
  • Become the person who would attract the results you seek. ~ Jim Cathcart (Speaker)

winston churchill failure quote



Overcome Failure Quotes

As a sales professional, it’s easy to focus on small failures when compared to your overall success. And yet those small failures serve to become your stepping stones to glory. So don’t sweat the small stuff.

  • Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill (Former British Prime Minister)
  • Failure is success if we learn from it. ~ Malcolm Forbes (Publisher, Forbes magazine)
  • Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough. ~ Og Mandino (Author)
  • Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them yourself. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt (Former First Lady of the US)
  • It’s really all about the leads. Do your best to always move from less assertive methodologies to those that are more assertive and more effective. That’s where the results are. ~ Ken Krogue (President, Inside Sales)
  • Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going. ~ Sam Levenson (Humorist)
  • Relevant prospect intelligence, plugged into planned, practiced, persuasive and proven messaging, repeated persistently, with a positive attitude = sales results. ~ Art Sobczak (Founder, Business By Phone Inc.)
  • It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. ~ J.K. Rowling (Author)
  • When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel. ~ Eloise Ristad (Writer)
  • There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure. ~ Colin Powell (Former US National Security Advisor)
  • Customer point of view. Always. Filter everything you’re doing, saying and pitching through that and you’ll improve just about every metric you care about today. ~ Matt Heinz (President, Heinz Marketing)

Sales Quotes to Achieve Success

It’s worth having a list of motivational sales quotes to remind you why you want to be successful in the first place. These are some thoughtful musings on achieving success.

  • There is always room at the top. ~ Daniel Webster (Former U.S. Secretary of State)
  • Think about the customer’s business and what business problem they are trying to address. This helps you take a solution-centric approach to the sale. ~ Donal Daly (Founder, The TAS Group)
  • You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. ~ Henry Ford (Industrialist)
  • The most crucial characteristic you should be hiring for is drive. ~ Kevin Gaither, (VP Inside Sales, ZipRecruiter)
  • The modern sales professional doubles as an information concierge — providing the right information to the right person at the right time in the right channel. ~ Jill Rowley (Social Selling Evangelism and Enablement, Oracle)
  • The salesperson who delivers the most valuable information to their customer or prospect first, wins the game. ~ Dave Orrico (VP of Enterprise Sales, Inside Sales)
  • You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.  ~ C.S. Lewis (Writer)
  • Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice. ~ Wayne Dyer (Author and speaker)
  • 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 (Author)
  • If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will. ~ Bob Hooey (Author)

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Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a professional freelance writer and journalist based in the United Kingdom. Since 2006, Gabrielle has been writing articles, blogs and news pieces for a diverse range of publications and sites. You can read "Gabrielle’s blog here.".

4 Reactions
  1. At the end of the day, it is all about the value that you provide. The greater your perceived value, the greater your sales will be.

  2. Answering the clients current need is the most important focus in sales. Most of the sales people love to brag about their company which is wrong in the exploring process of the prospect.

  3. These quotes are exactly what some people need to hear. I definitely want to remember these quotes and use them for myself.

  4. These motivational sales quotes are just awesome, thanks for sharing this.