Quotes & Sayings About Salespeople

Qualified software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople in Silicon Valley can rack up dozens of high-paying, high-upside job offers any time they want, while national unemployment and underemployment is sky high. — Marc Andreessen

We have this myth that extroverts are better salespeople. As a result, extroverts are more likely to enter sales; extroverts are more likely to get promoted in sales jobs. But if you look at the correlation between extroversion and actual sales performance - that is, how many times the cash register actually rings - the correlation's almost zero. — Daniel H. Pink

Most salespeople would like to think of themselves as being rock stars, but they don't display the talent to match their definition. — Jeffrey Gitomer

Not believing in what you have to sell This is blindingly obvious but perhaps is the number one reason why many salespeople do not succeed. Not even the most accomplished actor can consistently get away with selling something they fundamentally don't believe in. — Simon Bozeat

All top salespeople have a highly evolved will all top leaders have a highly evolved will you see it's the will that gives us the ability to focus — Bob Proctor

You can use social media to turn strangers into friends, friends into customers and customers into salespeople. — Seth Godin

Salespeople using social media exceeded sales quotas 23 percent more often than peers not using social media. — Shannon Belew

Selling is not complicated. If salespeople consistently practice the fundamentals - getting up early, contacting prospective clients, sharing their belief in their products and services, following up with customers - they'll be successful. — John G. Miller

Art is too important a term to be used just for painters. And sculptors. And playwrights. And actors. And architects of a certain type. No, I think we need to broaden it to graphic designers and salespeople and bosses. To lay preachers, to gifted politicians and occasionally, to the guy who sweeps the floor. Art is a human act, something that's done with the right sort of intent. Art is when we do work that matters, in a creative way, in a way that touches them and changes them for the better.[1] Seth Godin, Graceful — Emily P. Freeman

When big-time blunders occur in any workplace, the boss or bosses usually are at fault, not clerks or secretaries or salespeople. Not reporters, the buck stops with the boss. — Al Neuharth

Giving people favors is a time-honored way of gaining loyalty. Pharmaceutical reps do it. The salespeople manning cosmetic counters do it. Lobbyists do it. Men with big crushes on impossibly beautiful women do it. Gifts work on our feelings in a couple of ways: they change the way we experience something, and they push our "reciprocate!" button. When we have the mandate to be objective and an incentive not to be, our biases often win the day-even if we don't think they will. Favors deeply affect our preferences and our loyalties. — Dan Ariely

displayed and sold represented the very worst of what could go wrong when things weren't done his way. The salespeople, always interested in quick turnover, seemed to make little effort to understand what was special about a Mac, and had less incentive to do so after — Brent Schlender

Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win. — Jeffrey Gitomer

If we were to construct a similar map for society, it would have to include each person's professional and personal interests and chart everyone she or he knew. It would make Milgram's experiment seem clumsy and obsolete by allowing us to find, in seconds, the shortest path to any person in the world. It would be a must-use tool for everyone from politicians to salespeople and epidemiologists. Of course, such a social search engine is impossible to build, since it would take at least a lifetime to interrogate all 6 billion people on the earth to learn about their friends and acquaintances. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Many salespeople are trying to make their quota rather than developing a deeper belief in their product or service - and even worse, they don't have a strong enough belief in themselves. — Jeffrey Gitomer

Resolve to be among the top 20% of salespeople who make 80% of the sales. — Brian Tracy

Why do customers (and that includes you and me) find it so difficult to recall more than a couple of occasions when they felt that they were treated exceptionally by the salespeople who dealt with them? — Chris Murray

It was always my practice to train salespeople under my direct supervision, and to treat children with the utmost consideration. — James Cash Penney

While the meetings included traders, that is, people who are judged on their numerical performance, it was mostly a forum for salespeople (people capable of charming customers), and the category of entertainers called Wall Street "economists" or "strategists," who make pronouncements on the fate of the markets, but do not engage in any form of risk taking, thus having their success dependent on rhetoric rather than actually testable facts. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

What makes a good salesperson? Let me be clear that it's not the person who can talk someone into anything. It's not the hustler who is a smooth talker. The best salespeople are the ones who put themselves in their customer's shoes and provide a solution that makes the customer happy. — Mark Cuban

Why should anyone buy anything from you if you don't believe in your product? There's a reason why confident salespeople are successful. — Timi Nadela

George paid for college by working for Cutco. Cutco is a company that makes and sells knives. Their salespeople go door-to-door. George Pinkman talked his way into peoples' homes with a big bag of knives and sold them potential murder weapons. Do I have to add that he was their top salesman three years running? I do not. — MaryJanice Davidson

Many of us think of salespeople as people travelling around with sample kits. Instead, we are all salesman, every day of our lives. — Charles M. Schwab

Theatricals can be irritating, but will provide a better night out than mobile phone salespeople. — Arthur Smith

Everybody has a product to sell - no matter whether you're an employee, a founder, or an investor. It's true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don't see any salespeople, you're the salesperson. — Peter Thiel

I think because both of my parents were essentially salespeople, and Italian-Americans, I always seemed to get along with people; I had a knack of finding something to talk about. — Bob Colacello

Salesmanship is limitless. Our very living is selling. We are all salespeople. — James Cash Penney

Treat objections as requests for further information. — Brian Tracy

I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company. — Walter Isaacson

Good salespeople inspire themselves. Great salespeople inspire others. — Timi Nadela

Most salespeople are half prepared. They know everything about their company and their product. They know nothing about their prospect. — Jeffrey Gitomer

The worst performers and the best performers are givers; takers and matchers are more likely to land in the middle. This pattern holds up across the board. The Belgian medical students with the lowest grades have unusually high giver scores, but so do the students with the highest grades. Over the course of medical school, being a giver accounts for 11 percent higher grades. Even in sales, I found that the least productive salespeople had 25 percent higher giver scores than average performers - but so did the most productive salespeople. The top performers were givers, and they averaged 50 percent more annual revenue than the takers and matchers. Givers dominate the bottom and the top of the success ladder. Across occupations, if you examine the link between reciprocity styles and success, the givers are more likely to become champs - not only chumps. — Adam M. Grant

Having enough other opportunities to work on is the best position a salesperson and his or her company can be in. A full pipeline gives salespeople the strongest position from which to negotiate - the ability to say no. — Keith M. Eades

Customers expect salespeople to stimulate the sales process, to ask the right questions and finally to ask for their business. When this initiative or confidence is lacking, no matter how much they like you personally, they aren't going to respect or value you as a business partner. — Ann-Marie Heidingsfelder

A private wealth-management firm always invited the wife of one of the company's executives to events. Everyone knew that she would be the first to say hello, to offer a hand, or to help someone find a seat. "She always acted as if she were greeting people in her own home," said the event manager. "She was better than most of our salespeople." Be first. Take the initiative. People appreciate it when you make the effort. — Suzanne Bates

Financial planners are salespeople. They are NOT teachers. Get your education from someone NOT getting a commission. — Robert Kiyosaki

Why do so many salespeople talk to customers about the product and not the result? — Chris Murray

A book tour is not a good opportunity to let your mind wander. You have to pay attention, remember salespeople's and interviewers' names, succinctly summarize your book in a 'selling' way, and so on. — Ian Frazier

I have observed several hundred salespeople who were taught to use deceptive practices like 'bait and switch' and encouraged to play negotiation games with customers. They were so stressed by this behavior that they suffered from a high incidence of alcohol and substance abuse, divorce, job-jumping, and low productivity. In the same industry, I have observed countless people who had been taught to sell with high integrity. Ironically, their customer satisfaction, profit margins, and salesperson retention were significantly higher. — Ron Willingham

Traders and quants are genuinely different species. Traders pride themselves on being tough and forthright while quants are more circumspect and reticent. These differences in personality are reflections of deeper cultural preferences. Traders are paid to act. All day long they watch screens, assimilate economic information, page frantically through spreadsheets, run programs written by quants, enter trades, talk to salespeople and brokers, and punch keys. It's hard to have an extended conversation with a trader during the business day; it takes an hour of standing around to have five minutes of punctuated repartee. Part of what traders do has a video game quality. In consequence, they learn to be opinionated, visceral, fast-thinking, and decisive, though not always right. They thrive on interruption. Quants — Emanuel Derman

No computer network with pretty graphics can ever replace the salespeople that make our society work. — Clifford Stoll

Salespeople move an economy of a nation. Someone could have invented the most amazing invention that is going to be a revolution for a planet, but that product goes nowhere unless someone sells it to someone else. — Michael Delaware

I've come to believe that there's a special place in hell reserved for wicked salespeople where they sit for all eternity being forced to answer their own Situation Questions. — Anonymous

If I can make you feel the same way that I feel about my
product or service we'll have a meaningful conversation about it
and how it can help. The trouble is that most sales people don't feel
anything. Nothing at all — Chris Murray

Good salespeople sell value and social media is the best place to find this value because of its transparency. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Salespeople are the most vital people in any business. Without sales, the biggest and most sophisticated companies shut down. Sales are the spark plug in the engine of free enterprise. There is a direct relationship between the success of the sales community and the success of the entire country. — Brian Tracy

I would like to express how I regard salespeople in general. I consider they embody a unified and diverse aggregate of the most able individuals in society and its workplace. In any economy, they are among the most valuable to its continued existence. They alone move the economy of a nation. — Michael Delaware

[Politicans] are salespeople. Instead of rotisserie ovens they are selling this idea of preemptive war or social-security reforms. — Jon Stewart

As a young designer explained to me bluntly: "Everyone upstairs is dumb," referring to the floor above the engineering lair at the 156 University office where customer support, administrators and salespeople sat. My first impulse was to laugh at his ridiculous, blithe dismissiveness, until I realized that it wasn't very funny. — Katherine Losse

I have next to no interest in makeup as a thing in and of itself, and nothing stresses me out like Sephora's salespeople. — Andrea Seigel

Your product should sell itself, but that does not mean you don't need salespeople. — Aaron Levie

It's astonishing how many business owners are terrified of selling. Salespeople who see the most people a day are the highest paid regardless of the economy. — Brian Tracy

I've known entrepreneurs who were not great salespeople, or didn't know how to code, or were not particularly charismatic leaders. But I don't know of any entrepreneurs who have achieved any level of success without persistence and determination. — Harvey MacKay

if salespeople want to sell value and differentiate their product, they have to deliver insight that will reframe the buying vision so buyers end up with the solution that helps them overcome their challenges and achieve their goals. — Michael Harris

The frantic stupidity of Wall Street's stock order routers and algorithms was simply an extension into the computer of the willful ignorance of its salespeople. — Michael Lewis

The community certainly included black English professors, like my mother, as well as black doctors and dentists, black mechanics, janitors, and contractors, black cobblers, wedding planners, real estate agents, and undertakers, several black lawyers, and a handful of black Mary Kay salespeople. As a child, however, I knew so many African Americans working in science, math, and engineering that I thought that's just what black folks did. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Remodeling defies the principles of modern commerce. You shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, yet these same people are constantly insinuating that you're cheap. (It reminded me of medicine, another area where you shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, who make you feel guilty for questioning a bill.) Construction workers are the blue-collar version of the snooty salespeople at Gucci who make $8 an hour but look down on you if you balk at a $400 alligator wallet. — Margo Kaufman

Business people love to hate their current software and love to love the next software they haven't yet bought. Salespeople count on this. But tomorrow's tools will become the current tools. — David E. Wile

A salaried job trains us to be "right" all the time and induces an entitlement mentality. This is because we get paid the same amount no matter what work we are producing, and we begin to see this is fair and right, and we begin being trained to think we are right all the time. When we become salespeople and marketers, we have to leave all of that behind. — Eben Pagan

I've worked with farmers in Zimbabwe who've lost their lands. I've worked with people in Venezuela, under threat of kidnappings, whose external world is unstable. But they have very strong social connections with their family and friends. And as a result, they're able to maintain a greater level of happiness and optimism than I've seen from bankers, consultants, or salespeople who are on the road all the time, who follow jobs separated from their families, and, as a result, find themselves missing out on the happiness that comes from those very connections that they severed. — Shawn Achor

Drug and medical device companies offered invitations to free dinners around town nightly. And there were over five thousand three hundred salespeople from some twelve hundred companies registered in attendance here - more than one for every two surgeons. The — Atul Gawande

I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters - people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them - not one - stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. — Elizabeth Warren

Great managers know they don't have 10 salespeople working for them. They know they have 10 individuals working for them . A great manager is brilliant at spotting the unique differences that separate each person and then capitalizing on them. — Marcus Buckingham

The business world traditionally rewards people for being closer to the top (case in point: outrageous CEO salaries) or for being closer to the transactions (investment bankers, salespeople). — Eric Schmidt

There's an idea out there that salespeople have actually been obliterated by the Internet, which is just not supported by the facts. — Daniel H. Pink

Over the long haul, salespeople come and go, but having top-shelf management in place is the ultimate answer. — Jason Jordan

Ten salespeople, all young, all dressed in generic cotton casual, looked up from their conversations, spotted the money in her hand, and simultaneously stopped breathing-their brains shutting down bodily functions and rerouting the needed energy to calculate the projected commissions contained in Jody's cash. One by one they resumed breathing and marched toward her, a look of dazed hunger in their eyes: a pack of zombies from the perky, youthful version of The Night of the Living Dead. "I wear a size four and I've got a date in fifteen minutes," Jody said. "Dress me." They descended on her like an evil khaki wave. — Christopher Moore

My dad continually reminded salespeople that their main job was to help the customer win. When you speak the account's language and frame the sales story around what is most meaningful to the client, you stand out from the competition. Customers see you differently because the words you choose demonstrate a commitment to their success. — Mike Weinberg

Salespeople on commission, for example, are seldom sensitive to the costs of the sales they produce. — W.Chan Kim

Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavements today, tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why? Because they are always thinking only of what they want. They don't realize that neither you nor I want to buy anything. If we did, we would go out and buy it. But both of us are eternally interested in solving our problems. And if salespeople can show us how their services or merchandise will help us solve our problems, they won't need to sell us. We'll buy. And customers like to feel that they are buying - not being sold. — Dale Carnegie

He strode briskly away, to do whatever it was the managers did. Have meetings, I guess. Make phone calls. It was hard for us on the technical side to understand why the company required so many managers. Engineers built things. Salespeople sold things. Even Human Resources I could understand, kind of. But managers proliferated despite performing very few identifiable functions. — Max Barry

Salespeople must take time to research the prospect before the first call and then integrate that information into their call. — Josiane Chriqui Feigon

Is the competition really some mythical beast? No, not really. Knowing how to play your group of salespeople as a team, to overcome the group objective of winning the customers support, is the objective. The opposing team in proper viewpoint is not just the similar competing business to yours. Nor is it the competing franchises of your home office.
No, in order to really be effective in the market place as a surviving business, you must go beyond that philosophy. You must be willing to expand your viewpoint to fully understand who the competition truly is.
Your true competition is simply this: Anywhere that your customer would spend his or her dollars as opposed to spending them at your company or place of business. — Michael Delaware

We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven't realized this yet, or haven't articulated it, but we need artists. — Seth Godin

Buying market share by hiring your competitors' salespeople does nothing good for your reputation in the industry. Maybe you don't care when you're young and brash, but eventually you learn that reputation is a crucial business asset, worth much more over the long run than a few extra sales. — Norm Brodsky

Rules are in every company for everyone to follow. Eh, except salespeople.
Jeffrey Gitomer — Jeffrey Gitomer

Several national tests have revealed the following startling statistics about why salespeople fail ... 15% Improper training both product and sales skills. 20% Poor verbal and written communication skills. 15% Poor or problematic boss or management. 50% Attitude. — Jeffrey Gitomer

Sales and theater have much in common. Both take guts. Salespeople pick up the phone and call strangers; actors walk onto the stage in front of them. Both invite rejection - for salespeople, slammed doors, ignored calls, and a pile of nos; for actors, a failed audition, an unresponsive audience, a scathing review. And both have evolved along comparable trajectories. — Daniel H. Pink

That all salespeople are different, that all accountants are different, that each individual, no matter what his chosen profession, is unique. — Marcus Buckingham

Know this about yourself: there is only one reason professional salespeople lose orders-- they are outsold. — Jim Holden

I've always taught that a poor economy is the best opportunity for salespeople because the naysayers and grumblers have already given up, leaving more territory, more opportunities to be successful than in a good economy when virtually all salespeople are out there, giving it their best. — Zig Ziglar

When you hear bosses talk about their best salespeople, they often refer to them as rock stars. It's the highest praise your boss can give someone on your team. — Jeffrey Gitomer

Pitney's first management meeting of the new year typically consisted of about fifteen minutes discussing the previous year (almost always superb results) and two hours talking about the "scary squiggly things" that might impede future results.28 Pitney Bowes sales meetings were quite different from the "aren't we great" rah-rah sales conferences typical at most companies: The entire management team would lay itself open to searing questions and challenges from salespeople who dealt directly with customers.29 — James C. Collins

Prospects get called everyday by salespeople. They can tell if you are a sincere or impatient sales person who doesn't really care about their problems. — Timi Nadela

Only two groups of people intimidate me absolutely: salespeople and the French. — Bette Midler

To boost bonding among others so they are more apt to work (or play) well together, ask them, when together, to do two powerfully simple things that can be done rather quickly:
1. Write down the ways they are like each other. Hint: Create a level playing field. Writing rather than immediately sharing helps slow thinkers keep up with fast thinkers. Fast thinkers aren't smarter, just different in their thinking processes, and each kind has advantages and pitfalls, so they can accomplish more together than when a majority in a group think and speak at the same speed. Hint: Salespeople are often fast thinkers.
2. Share with each other what they wrote, going around the circle, one by one.
Bonus benefit: Other studies show that when you reflect on how you are similar to those with whom you are talking, you pay more attention to them. You care about them more. That spurs the other person to listen more closely to you. — Kare Anderson