Hilarious and Motivating: The Ultimate Collection of Funny Inspiring Sales Quotes

"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

"Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with you."

- Zig Ziglar

"I think the biggest mistake that salespeople make today is that they try to pretend they’re not salespeople."

- Irreverent Sales Girl

"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 elevator to health, happiness, and Success [for a salesman] is “out of order.” You’ll have to use the stairs, one step at a time."

- Joe Girard

"People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day."

- Winnie the Pooh

"I want you to back yourself into a corner. Give yourself no choice but to succeed. Let the consequences of failure become so dire and so unthinkable that you’ll have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed."

- Jordan Belfort

"Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia."

- Charles Schulz

"My sales objective is to get my prospects to look at my products the same way I look at bacon."

- Kurt Mortensen

"Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions."

- Jordan Belfort

"I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade… And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party."

- Ron White

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

- Thomas Edison

"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realise I should have been more specific."

- Lily Tomlin

"People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily."

- Zig Ziglar

"The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs, one step at a time."

- Joe Girard

"I never lose. I either win or learn"

- Nelson Mandela

"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says "I'm possible!""

- Audrey Hepburn

"If they don’t give you a seat at the [negotiating] table, bring a folding chair."

- Shirley Chisholm

"Optimist: someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it’s more like a cha-cha."

- Robert Brault

"People like to buy things they need from people they like. And somewhere we screwed it all up by making it some kind of crazy thing. It’s simply, ‘What do you need? What are you trying to solve? Do I have it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is it the right price?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Next.'"

- Irreverent Sales Girl

"On an important call late in the sales cycle, negotiations were getting intense. Neither side wanted to back down from the numbers that had been shared. But at a crucial point in the conversation, the party we were selling to forgot to hit the mute button on their conference line. We overheard them raving on and on about how much they liked the product, and we knew they were completely sold. Knowing this gave us the leverage we needed to close the deal on our terms. The moral of the story? Always check that mute button; it could save you some money."

- George Gallegos

"The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullsh*t story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it."

- Jordan Belfort

"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."

- Jordan Belfort

"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."

- Jordan Belfort

"You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?"

- Steven Wright

"[Sales is] trying to get to a decision. Now, preferably a yes, but sometimes a quick no is almost as good an answer. But a long no maybe will kill you."

- Alston Gardner

"Change is not a four letter word… but often your reaction to it is!"

- Jeffrey Gitomer

"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito."

- Dalai Lama

"The question isn’t who is going to let me, it’s who is going to stop me."

- Ayn Rand

"I am an early bird and a night owl… so I am wise and I have worms"

- Michael Scott

"When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye."

- Cathy Guisewite

"A clear conscience is a sure sign of a bad memory."

- Mark Twain

"The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces."

- Will Rogers

"I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong."

- Benjamin Franklin

"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

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."

- Robin Williams

"Never ever chase money. You should chase success, because with success money follows."

- Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones

"A goal is a dream with a deadline."

- Napoleon Hill

"It’s no longer about interrupting, pitching, and closing. It is about listening, diagnosing, and prescribing."

- Mark Roberge

"Sellers who listen to buyers carefully and then give them the missing ingredients—those are the ones who stand out."

- Deb Calvert

"Before LinkedIn and other social networks in the sales world, ABC stood for Always Be Closing. Now it means "Always Be Connecting.”"

- Jill Rowley

"Hustle until your haters ask if you’re hiring"

- Steve Maraboli

"If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes."

- John Wooden

"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary."

- Vince Lombardi

"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

"Business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another one coming"

- Richard Branson

"The best paying hard work in the world is selling, and the poorest paying easy work in the world is selling."

- Zig Ziglar

"Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is"

- Vince Lombardi

"Some salesmen think that selling is like eating—to satisfy an existing appetite; but a good salesman is like a good cook—he can create an appetite when the buyer isn’t hungry."

- George Lorimer

"Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers."

- Seth Godin

"Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude."

- Zig Ziglar

"You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do."

- Henry Ford

"If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on."

- Sheryl Sandberg

"Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is."

- Vince Lombardi

"There’s no lotion or potion that will make sales faster and easier for you – unless your potion is hard work."

- Jeffrey Gitomer

"I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard."

- Esteé Lauder

"Either run the day or the day runs you."

- Jim Rohn

"Growth and comfort do not coexist."

- Ginni Rometty

"The harder you work, the luckier you get."

- Gary Player

"Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win."

- Jeffrey Gitomer

"Whatever you are, be a good one."

- Abraham Lincoln

"To be clear, though, what I’m not talking about is that crazy brand of over-the-top enthusiasm, where you’re yelling and screaming and flailing your arms about as you go on and on about how amazing your product is. Not only is that completely ridiculous, but it’s also the easiest way to get your client running towards the exit."

- Jordan Belfort

"People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons."

- Zig Ziglar

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them yourself."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"All great achievements require time"

- Maya Angelou

"Success looks a lot like failure up until the moment you break through the finish line"

- Dan Waldschmidt

"On any given Monday I am one sale closer and one idea away from being a millionaire"

- Larry D. Turner

"Remember, it’s not just about being better at selling, it’s about being so good, they can’t ignore you."

- Steve Martin

"Prospects are perishable — handle with care."

- Zig Ziglar

"Only fools and dead men don’t change their minds. Fools won’t, and dead men can’t."

- John Henry. Patterson

"You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can sure sell a bunch of books if you have a good one."

- Jayce O’Neal

"The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is not training them and keeping them."

- Zig Ziglar

"To be successful in sales, simply talk to lots of people every day. And here’s what’s exciting — there are lots of people!"

- Jim Rohn

"Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect."

- William Clement Stone

"The difference between try and triumph is just a little umph!"

- Marvin Phillips

"Opportunity doesn’t make appointments; you have to be ready when it arrives."

- Tim Fargo

"Sales is not about selling anymore, but about building trust and educating."

- Siva Devaki

"Make a customer, not a sale."

- Katherine Barchetti

"In sales, a referral is the key to the door of resistance."

- Bo Bennett

"The best sales questions have your expertise wrapped into them."

- Jill Konrath

"Don’t sell life insurance. Sell what life insurance can do."

- Ben Feldman

"Everyone lives by selling something."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger."

- Franklin P. Jones

"Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings."

- Robert Bloch

"By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day."

- Robert Frost

"Don’t try to do everything by yourself, but try to connect with people and resources. Having that discipline and perseverance is really important."

- Chieu Cao

"There’s so much creativity in brokeness, brokeness will have you making it work."

- Issa Rae

"I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying."

- Oscar Wilde

"Life is like a sewer… what you get out of it depends on what you put into it."

- Tom Lehrer

"This is a metaphor for a brand-to-customer conversation. The brand will be played by the ogre, Shrek, and the customer will be played by his stalwart friend, Donkey. The brand wants to define itself. They want to put their position out there and say what they are, but the customer is reflecting back how they’re experiencing the brand and they have their own story. It goes a little something like this. ‘You know, for your information, there is a lot more to ogres than people think.’ ‘Example?’ ‘Ah, okay. Ogres are like onions!’ ‘They stink?’ ‘No!’ ‘Oh, they make you cry?’ ‘No!’ ‘Oh, you leave them out in the sun and they get all brown and start sprouting little white hairs?’ ‘No! Layers! Onions have layers! Ogres have layers.’”"

- Tristan Bishhop

"[Sales and marketing] have to start talking to each other. They’ve got to stop spilling each other’s beers."

- Ann Handley

"My favorite sales book? Harvey Mackay’s Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. Why? Well, it’s the only sales book I ever read."

- Tristan Bishhop

"If you let your head get too big, it'll break your neck."

- Elvis Presley

"Live each day like it's your second to the last. That way you can fall asleep at night."

- Jason Love

"Even a stopped clock is right twice every day. After some years, it can boast of a long series of successes."

- Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."

- Terry Pratchett

"Age is of no importance unless you’re a cheese."

- Billie Burke

""You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.""

- Wayne Gretzky

"If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will."

- Bob Hooey

"The most unprofitable item ever manufactured is an excuse."

- Jason Mason

"If we are smart, we make a lot of mistakes."

- Raman Frey

"There’s never any guarantee that anyone will like you. So if anyone likes you at all, you’ve already won."

- Chelsea Handler

"Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting."

- Christopher Morley

"Bad decisions make good stories."

- Ellis Vidler

"I’ll probably never fully become what I wanted to be when I grew up, but that’s probably because I wanted to be a ninja princess."

- Cassandra Duffy

"Well-behaved women seldom make history."

- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

"My favorite sales book? The Bible. I would improve it. You know how we people are."

- Kare Anderson

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."

- Marilyn Monroe

"If I tell you I want to be a door-to-door salesman, don’t knock it."

- Jarod Kintz

"‘Hey, here’s a gourd!’ is not so different as, ‘Hey, here’s enterprise sales software!’ The language changes, but the humans are the same."

- Chris Penn

"Never miss a good chance to shut up."

- Will Rogers

"You can take and nail two sticks together like they’ve never been nailed together before, and some fool will buy it."

- George Carlin

"Why miss a SALE at twenty dollars, when people will buy at $19.95? I’ve found that the opportunity to save that nickel really makes people say YES to buying a NEW duck."

- Jarod Kintz

"Sales isn’t about closing. It’s about opening… your inbox again. And again. And again."

- Peak Sales Recruiting

"Nothing is impossible; some things are just less likely than others."

- Jonathan Winters

""The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.""

- Walt Disney

""Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win.""

- Jeffrey Gitomer

"Before I do anything, I ask myself, ‘Would an idiot do that?’ And, if the answer is yes, I do not do that thing."

- Dwight Schrute, The Office

"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are vegetarian."

- Dennis Wholey

""Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.""

- W. Clement Stone

""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

""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.

""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

"Trying is the first step toward failure."

- Homer Simpson

"It could be that your purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others."

- Ashleigh Brilliant

"A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction."

- Justin Sewell

"With technology, you have to be careful because you can really be kind of cyberstalkerish."

- Eric T. Tung

""Sellers who listen to buyers carefully and then give them the missing ingredients – those are the ones who stand out.""

- Deb Calvert

"Some people are naturally funny and can drop some profanity, but I can’t pull that off."

- Lori Richardson

""The sales compensation plan is Batman, the sales contest is Robin.""

- Mark Roberge

""Start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you.""

- Jill Konrath

""Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.""

- Thomas Edison

""Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.""

- Norman Ralph Augustine

""Humanize the sales process or perish.""

- Steli Efti

""Ninety percent of selling is conviction, and 10 percent is persuasion.""

- Shiv Khera

""Quality performance and quality service starts with a positive attitude.""

- Jeffrey Gitomer

""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

""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

""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

""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

""There is no magic to closing. There are no magic phrases. Closing the deal is completely dependent on the situation.""

- Alice Heiman

""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

""A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.""

- David Brinkley

""When takes the role of a curious student rather than an informed expert, buyers are much more inclined to engage.""

- Jeff Hoffman

""Treat objections as requests for further information.""

- Brian Tracy

""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

""Successful people ask a lot more questions during sales calls than do their less successful colleagues.""

- Neil Rackham

""You have to drop your sales mentality and start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you.""

- Jill Konrath

""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

""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

""Keep your sales pipeline full by prospecting continuously. Always have more people to see than you have time to see them.""

- Brian Tracy

""Keep the customer actively involved throughout the presentation, and watch your results improve.""

- Harvey Mackay

"Doing [market] research on the web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly."

- Roger Ebert

"Make friends first, make sales second, make love third. In no particular order."

- Michael Scott

"A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing."

- Alec Baldwin (humorous twist)

"You might be a salesman if you insist you do more market research before you and your spouse have another child"

- Anonymous

"Michael Scott from The Office speaking nothing but facts"

- Michael Scott

"Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust."

"The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus."

"A diamond is merely a lump of coal that did well under pressure."

"Think like a proton. Always positive."

"Be happy – it drives people crazy."

"When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water."

"Why is it a ‘close’ if it’s supposed to be the start of a customer relationship?"

"A good salesperson knows how to talk; a great salesperson knows how to listen."

"Selling is a lot like tennis; if you don’t serve well, you lose immediately."

"I could sell ice to an Eskimo, but he’d probably just let it melt and drink it."

"You know you’re a salesperson when your lie detector test is inconclusive on every question except your name."

"I design, manufacture, distribute, and sell elevator buttons. I also install and repair them. I thought it was a good idea at first, but now I’m starting to come down."

"The best time to call me is email."

""You might think it’s Adidas but it’s nothing more than Abibas mate" - this line is for you to say the next time someone says, “life of a sales rep is too easy and fun.”"

"The best things in life are actually really expensive."

"Happiness is just sadness that hasn’t happened yet."

"If the world didn't suck we'd all fly into space."

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts."

"Always remember that you are unique – just like everybody else."

"I used to think I was indecisive, but now I’m not so sure."

"Dreams are like rainbows. Only idiots chase them."

"Work until your bank account looks like a phone number."

"Every tattoo is temporary, because we’re all slowly dying."