Good Sales Quotes

Sometimes a quote will punch through much material in a book or an article and give us something worth thinking about.
A good quote may rattle our preconceived notions or challenge our attitude, and it might frame our circumstances into better light where they aren’t as gloomy as we thought. Or a quote can motivate or inform us with super-quick insights into how to ask a better question, deploy a new strategy, have the right mindset, or reach a prospect that’s suddenly gone dark.
I love quotes, and I keep journals and digital files full of quotes, and over many years I’ve penned a few of my own in books, media interviews, and the talks I give.
Here are a few of my own quotes, hopefully, at least one will get you thinking.

1. Customers must think before they buy. Questions make them think.
2. Your sales approach is designed to produce precisely the results you’re getting. If you don’t like your results change your approach.
3. Customers buy value for different reasons; theirs, not yours.
4. When you listen, use one ear to comprehend what your customer is saying and use the other ear to discern what they haven’t said yet.
5. Stop focusing on time management and to-do lists, scheduling, and such. Focus first on ‘why’ certain companies get your time and not others – focus on opportunity management instead.
6. Don’t say stuff buyers tune out.
7. To earn big, learn big.
8. If you think you know who the decision-maker is, think again. Never assume who will or won’t, know then sell to anyone who has the slightest influence on your success.
9. Customers buy how you sell before they buy what you sell.
10. About the only thing I can think of worse than losing a sale is not knowing that our value message was viewed “same as theirs” …that’s when we lose the next deal and the next.
11. The best way to differentiate value is to know the customer’s whiteboard issues – the issues you can’t see, don’t know, and never will unless you dig them out intelligently.
12. There’s nothing more potent in a customer relationship than trust, and it’s universally true that people must trust you to buy from you, and the more they trust, the more they buy.
13. The #1 Killer to sales is when you think what you know about the buyer isn’t so.
14. Before buyers want to fully understand your product’s value, they want to know that you fully understand theirs.
15. Get this through your thick knowledge and years of experience; selling is not about you. It is solely and totally about THEM.
16. Don’t talk too much, listen too hastily, and ask good questions too rarely. Spend 30 percent of your time talking and 70 percent of it asking intelligent questions and listening carefully.
17. If you don’t sell value convincingly and better than your competitor does, don’t be surprised when your customer commoditizes your offer by negotiating the livelihood out of your price.
18. You can’t control your competitor’s pricing, the industry, or the economy, but you can control three critical drivers of success: your attitude, selling activity, and individual actions.
19. Stop “if only” thinking. If only I could sell my competitor’s product, if only I had a lower price, or if only I had better accounts to call on. That kind of thinking will dig you into a deep mental rut.
20. You can’t bore customers into buying your product.

Does anything stand out for you? Which quote gets you thinking, considering new possibilities or changes you want to make in the coming weeks or this next year?