81 Motivational Sales Quotes To Fire You Up [INFOGRAPHIC]

Looking for encouraging quotes to power you through another workday? These motivational sales quotes are what you need to achieve sales success, conquer the tough times, face rejection, and fill your life with inspiration. Read on to find out more!

RELATED: 6 Sales Motivation Secrets So Simple Even A Caveman Can Use Them

In this article:

1. Some Wise Words to Live By
2. Great Sales Quotes When You Want to Achieve Goals
3. Sales Motivation Quotes to Push You to Sell Well
4. Motivational Sales Quotes When You’re Feeling the Burnout
5. Sales Quotes for Those Facing Challenges and Rejection
6. Motivational Quotes for Sales Teams
7. Inspirational Sales Quotes to Make You Laugh or Smile
8. Inspirational Quotes from Sales Legends
9. Inspiration Quotes from Other Motivational People Who Aren’t from the Sales Industry
10. Encouraging Quotes for When You’re Lacking Ambition
11. Quotes to Help You Deal With Objections From Prospects
12. Motivational Sales Quotes That Will Encourage You to Be a Great Listener
13. Lighthearted Sales Inspiration Quotes to Make You Smile

81 Motivational Sales Quotes That Will Help You Succeed in Life and Business

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Some Wise Words to Live By

When it comes to motivational sales quotes, Zig Ziglar is the bomb diggity and a bag of chips.

He’s not the only voice worth listening to, though. The business world boasts a long line of leaders and big shots who know a thing or two about sales motivation.

Below are my favorite quotes for inspiration. Sales reps (or anyone who needs a boost) can choose to read this daily.

I hope they push you to develop hard work, maintain a positive attitude, build a reputation you can be proud of, and reach your goals. These quotes can certainly motivate an average man or woman to aspire for bigger, better things.

Great Sales Quotes When You Want to Achieve Goals

Sales goals are like the navigation tools of a ship. You and your sales team need them to steer the business toward success.

They can help you make tough selling decisions. They can even make you more efficient because you don’t waste time on unproductive activities.

The question is, what does it take to reach them? The answer is planning.

If you feel overwhelmed by the idea, consider these motivational sales quotes:

1. “You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.” — Zig Ziglar

2. “We must focus on purposes instead of just setting goals, for long-term vision is what keeps us from being frustrated by short-term failure.” — Dan Clark

3. “The world has the habit of making room for the man whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going.” — Napoleon Hill

Sales Motivation Quotes to Push You to Sell Well

How do you sell a product or a service? These motivational sales quotes can help you discover how to be successful in the business, such as having the proper mindset and creating relationships with the right customers.

4. “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

5. “You have to drop your sales mentality and start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you.” — Jill Konrath

6. “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” — Richard Branson

7. “Your job is to meet the right people and read the right books.” — Jeffrey Gitomer

8. “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 Covey

9. “Any job that’s not in sales – any job where I can’t help create value and make a difference for a client — would be a nightmare job for me.” — Anthony Iannarino

RELATED: Sales Motivation And Productivity Secrets From Aptean’s Mike Stensland

Motivational Sales Quotes When You’re Feeling the Burnout

Are you committing more mistakes and making excuses for them? Do you feel the things you do no longer make absolute sense?

It’s possible you’re already feeling burnt out. Selling is stressful and if you can’t manage stress properly, burning out is inevitable.

The good news is you have various ways to relax and rejuvenate.

If you’re slowly losing your passion, read these motivational sales quotes to help remind you of why you do what you do:

10. “Ask that extra question. It’s that one little extra question that makes the difference.” — Steve Richard

11. “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” — Oprah Winfrey

12. “One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.” — Steve Jobs

13. “The first part of success is ‘Get-to-it-iveness’; the second part of success is ‘Stick-to-it-iveness’.” — Orison Marden

14. “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.” — Winston Churchill

15. “A mediocre person tells. A good person explains. A superior person demonstrates. A great person inspires others to see for themselves.” — Harvey Mackay

16. “Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration, and resentment.” — Dale Carnegie

17. “Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.” — J. Paul Getty

Sales Quotes for Those Facing Challenges and Rejection

Rejection is hard, but it shouldn’t stop you from doing what you love and need to do. As they say, tough times don’t last — tough people do.

A sales team struggling to make quota may receive the encouragement it needs from these motivational sales quotes:

18. “I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.” — John D. Rockefeller

19. “Managing objections head-on is dead on.” – Kraig Kleeman

20. “Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self-interest.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

21. “The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.” — Tony Robbins

22. “Nothing is predestined: The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” – Ralph Blum

23. “Let’s change the way we look at what happens to us.” — Art Sobczak

24. “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is courage that counts.” — Winston Churchill

25. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” — Thomas Edison

26. “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” — Thomas Paine

27. “Fall down seven times and stand up eight.” — Proverb

28. “I got lucky because I never gave up the search. Are you quitting too soon? Or are you willing to pursue luck with a vengeance?” — Jill Konrath

29. “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” — Yogi Berra

30. “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” — Vince Lombardi

31. “Trying is winning in the moment.” — Dan Waldschmidt

32. “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” — Og Mandino

33. “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.” — Lucille Ball

Motivational Quotes for Sales Teams

Rejection can be hard to accept, especially if it affects the entire team. Sometimes, one salesperson’s mistake is amplified, causing conflicts among team members.

Blaming each other or trying to overpower team members can affect the relationship you’ve built and nurtured as a team.

If you want your team to succeed in sales, this shouldn’t be the case.

Closing the deal to reach your sales goal doesn’t have to be the burden of just one person. With a unified team, you can work together to go even beyond what’s expected of you.

With a united team, you can achieve even more than the goals you’ve set.

Here are some sales inspiration quotes to inspire teamwork:

34. “Great things are done by a series of small things done together.” — Vincent van Gogh

35. “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” — Andrew Carnegie

36. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” — Henry Ford

37. “The best teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison.” — James Cash Penney

38. “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” — Henry Ford

39. “Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” — Patrick Lencioni

40. “Unity is strength… when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” — Mattie Stepanek

41. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” — Phil Jackson

Inspirational Sales Quotes to Make You Laugh or Smile

When you feel stressed and burned out, laughing can help ease the tension from your body.

Here are some funny sales quotes you can use to pump up your team’s mood and still inspire the members at the same time:

42. “[Sales and marketing] have to start talking to each other. They’ve got to stop spilling each other’s beers.” — Ann Handley

43. “If I tell you I want to be a door-to-door salesman, don’t knock it.” — Jarod Kintz

44. “If we are smart, we make a lot of mistakes.” — Raman Frey

45. “‘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

46. “A salesman minus enthusiasm is just another clerk.” — Harry F. Banks

47. “The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs one step at a time.” — Joe Girard

48. “The difference between try and triumph is just a little umph!” — Marvin Phillips

49.  “Change is not a four-letter word but often your reaction to it is!” — Jeffrey Gitomer

50. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” — Thomas Edison

Inspirational Quotes from Sales Legends

There’s no better place to draw inspiration from than the legends in the sales industry themselves.

These icons have been through the ups and downs of the industry and speak of truths molded from experience and the time they put into the industry. You can use their words to motivate and drive you, with the knowledge that, at one point, they were where you are right now.

Here are some quotes from iconic people in the industry to motivate you:

51. “To survive, men and business and corporations must serve.” — John Henry Patterson

52. “Most people buy not because they believe but because the salesperson believes.” — Ben Feldman

53. “Sales are a function of product-value and advertising. Promotions cannot produce more than a temporary kink in the sales curve.” — David Ogilvy

54. “Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or neck that says: ‘Make me feel important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.” — Mary Kay Ash

55. “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.” — Dale Carnegie

Inspiration Quotes from Other Motivational People Who Aren’t from the Sales Industry

You don’t only have to find inspiration from people in the sales industry. After all, sales lessons can sometimes be applied in our lives outside of our careers, and the opposite is true as well.

Check out some of these inspirational quotes from inspirational and noteworthy people and let it inspire you to succeed in your business:

56. “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” — Dalai Lama XIV

57. “Success isn’t always about Greatness, it’s about consistency. Consistent, hard work gains success. Greatness will come.” — Dwayne Johnson

58. “Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.” — Charlie Chaplin

59. “The most effective way to do it is to do it.” — Amelia Earhart

60. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” — C.S. Lewis

Encouraging Quotes for When You Lack Ambition

Passion is one thing that’ll be useful in any career, but one quality that’ll push you further than passion is ambition.

Ambition is just like passion in the sense that both are associated with having an intense desire for something. The difference between the two, though, is ambition requires more hard work and grit.

On that note, if you need help reigniting that spark in your sales career, then let these encouraging quotes do it for you:

61. “A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be.” — Steven Brust

62. “Ambition beats genius 99% of the time.” — Jay Leno

63. “A dream without ambition is like a car without gas, you’re not going anywhere.” — Sean Hampton

64. “You can’t leave a life being afraid, because fear censors ambition.” — Erol Alkan

65. “Ambition is the first step to success. The second step is action.” — Unknown

Quotes to Help You Deal with Objections from Prospects

Dealing with objections from a customer day in and day out can be harsh. If you don’t learn how to manage the stress from it, then you won’t be in the right mindset to overcome sales objections.

Since objections are unavoidable in the sales industry, reps can do with a good morale boost from time to time.

To give you motivation on how to deal and overcome sales objections better, here are some sales motivational quotes for objections. 

66. “Treat objections as requests for further information.” — Brian Tracy

67. “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” — Zig Ziglar

68. “When you present the value of your products and services in a clear, compelling way, then you’ve tackled 90% of objections.” — Nancy Marmolejo

Motivational Sales Quotes That Will Encourage You to Be a Great Listener

When people think you’re a salesperson, they may assume you’re a master conversationalist. What they don’t know, though, is that being a talker in sales isn’t enough.

If you make most of your sales by talking, then you won’t be able to take advantage of the benefits of listening. Listening is an important skill for any master sales strategist.

Doing most of the talking in a sales conversation doesn’t guarantee that you’ll close the deal. It’s also crucial to listen to the prospect, so you’ll understand what they really need and how you can offer products or services for that need.

Here are some quotes that attest to the value of listening in a sales conversation. 

69. “It’s about listening first, then selling.” — Erik Qualman

70. “Most people think ‘selling’ is the same as talking, but the most effective salespeople know that listening is the most important part of the job.” — Roy Bartell

71. “We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.” — Zeno of Citium

72. “Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.” — Bernard M. Baruch

73. “It takes a great man to be a good listener.” — Calvin Coolidge

74. “There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing.” — G.K. Chesterton

75. “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.” — Ralph G. Nichols

Lighthearted Sales Inspiration Quotes to Make You Smile

Serious inspirational sales quotes are really helpful, but sometimes, you need to get some lighthearted thoughts to get you through the day. Sales is already a mentally and emotionally exhausting job, so here are some lighthearted sales quotes to make you smile. 

76. “A salesman minus enthusiasm is just another clerk.” — Harry F. Banks

77. “Customers long to interact with—even relate to—employees who act like there is still a light on inside.” — Chip Bell

78. “Sales without Customer Service is like stuffing money into a pocket full of holes.” — David Tooman

79. “Customers are like teeth. Ignore them and they’ll go away.” — Jerry Flanagan

80. “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” — Theodore Roosevelt

81. “There’s no such thing as “hard sell” and “soft sell.” There’s only “smart sell” and “stupid sell.” — Leo Burnett

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These motivational sales quotes may be geared toward sales professionals, but they are also applicable to anyone. After all, everybody faces problems, stress, and burnout.

People like to create goals and succeed. Read these quotes as often as you can to stay motivated.

More importantly, understand what they mean and live them out. These encouraging quotes from wise people won’t only inspire you but will also help you build your confidence and discover what things truly matter in life.

What are your well-loved motivational sales quotes? Share your list in the comments section below!

Up Next: 

• How To Hack Your Team’s Sales Motivation (Or How To Motivate Your Sales Team)
• How To Keep Your Sales Team Motivated During The Holidays
• What Is Artificial Intelligence And How Can You Start Using It To Be Successful

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on April 12, 2013, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.