Powerful Sales Motivational Quotes

A book can give you an experience of someone’s life in a few hours, and this is far more profitable than any sale that’s going on.

Ought we not to love dearly the neighbor, who truly represents to us the sacred Person of our Master? And is this not one of the most powerful motives we could have for loving each other with an ardently burning love?

Excerpt from Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality. Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write. Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.

If I had to pick the single most powerful force in advertising and selling—the most important psychological trigger—I would pick honesty.

Winners run through the finish line. End your day with passion and enthusiasm.

Women are taught to sacrifice, to play nice, to live an altruistic life because a good girl is always rewarded in the end. This is not a virtue; it is propaganda. Submission gets you a ticket to future prosperity that will never manifest. By the time you realize the ticket to success and happiness you have been sold isn’t worth the paper it was printed on, it will be too late. Go on, spend a quarter of your life, even half of your life, in the service of others and you will realize you were hustled. You do not manifest your destiny by placing others first! A kingdom built on your back doesn’t become your kingdom, it becomes your folly. History does not remember the slaves of Egypt that built the pyramids, they remember the Pharaohs that wielded the power over those laborers. Yet here you are, content with being a worker bee, motivated by some sales pitch that inspires you to work harder for some master than you work for yourself, with this loose promise that one day you will share in his wealth. Altruism is your sin. Selfishness is your savior. Ruthless aggression and self-preservation are not evil. Why aren’t females taught these things? Instead of putting themselves first, women are told to be considerate and selfless. From birth, they have been beaten in the head with this notion of “Don’t be selfish!” Fuck that. Your mother may have told you to wait your turn like a good girl, but I’m saying cut in front of that other bitch. Club Success is about to hit capacity, and you don’t want to be the odd woman out. Where are the powerful women? Those who refuse to play by those rules and want more out of life than what a man allows her to have? I created a category for such women and labeled them Spartans. Much like the Greek warriors who fought against all odds, these women refuse to surrender and curtsy before the status quo. Being

Whether it is in a sales situation, love at first sight, a husband and wife having an important conversation, a parent disciplining a child, or a teacher instructing her students, eye contact is a powerful body language for enriching engagement, focus, and communication.

From these definitions and axioms springs my central hypothesis: political parties in a democracy formulate policy strictly as a means of gaining votes. They do not seek to gain office in order to carry out certain preconceived policies or to serve any particular interest groups; rather they formulate policies and serve interest groups in order to gain office. Thus their social function—which is to formulate and carry out policies when in power as the government—is accomplished as a by-product of their private motive—which is to attain the income, power, and prestige of being in office. This hypothesis implies that, in a democracy, the government always acts so as to maximize the number of votes it will receive. In effect, it is an entrepreneur selling policies for votes instead of products for money. Furthermore, it must compete for votes with other parties, just as two or more oligopolists compete for sales in a market.

Thank you Neil, and to the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction—writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists. I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. (Thank you, brave applauders.) Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial; I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books, and make the books, accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write. (Well, I love you too, darling.) Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I have had a long career and a good one. In good company. Now here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want—and should demand—our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom. Thank you.

also been a white-collar worker in my career. In my experience, there are two types of people who do this type of work: Achievers and Hiders. Achievers are the people who want to perform at a high level. They are ambitious, motivated and energetic. They are full of ideas and want to move up the corporate ladder, which are great attributes to have. But there is a downside for the Achiever. The moment a person decides to be an Achiever, they become a target. Their boss sees them as threatening to their job, so they start to hold them down or take shots at their reputation. Their peers see them as a person who will either embarrass them or keep them from getting a promotion, so they start to do what they can to undermine their accomplishments. So, to remain an Achiever and survive in this hostile environment, a person must become good at one thing that has nothing to do with their productivity—and that’s politics. They must learn how to navigate the political world by diminishing their enemies and strengthening their relationship with powerful people. In fact, some of the most successful people in the corporate world aren’t Achievers at all. They are pure politicians. So if you decide to work in the corporate environment and to be an Achiever, you must accept the fact that you must become a good politician also. Now, let’s talk about the Hiders. These are the people who HATE politics, but still need a job. They learn not to be the ambitious Achiever. They don’t stand out. They don’t speak up in meetings. They don’t bring new ideas. They HIDE. They keep their heads down and do as they’re told. They do just enough so that they aren’t talked about negatively. They survive. And this has worked for decades. But in the New Economy, it’s becoming much more difficult to hide. And people are running out of time. So, back to our Perfect Career List: Can a white-collar job deliver on the list? Again, the clear answer is no—certainly not in very many areas. Sales

The vice president had also been present at an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday, January 7, 1986, when Secretary of State George Shultz “argued fiercely and with passion against any arms sales to Iran, especially arms sales connected to the release of the hostages,” Shultz recalled. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who was also there, agreed with Shultz, and said so. “No one else did,” Shultz recalled. Bush was silent as Reagan decided to proceed amid what Weinberger recalled as “talk of the hostages as one of the motivating factors.

If you want to motivate people, then it’s more important to think about what they want, rather than what you want.

Always Positive Is Not the Most Productive Salespeople have tried numerous ways to address the fact that prospects are motivated differently. One of the most prevalent sales tricks is to try to motivate prospects with “happy gas.” For decades, sellers have been told that attitude is everything, and the more enthusiastic you are, the more excited your prospects will become. You know the drill—flash a big smile and bubble over with energy in an attempt to get prospects excited about your product. Gag me! Especially in this new era of customer skepticism, this fluffy cloud approach to selling is just a facade that causes many salespeople to miss out on some otherwise lucrative opportunities. Even salespeople who are not filled with happy gas still tend to emphasize the positive, pointing out all the wonderful benefits of their product or service, in an attempt to get prospects and customers excited. But as you are about to find out, always positive is not always the most productive approach in Question Based Selling. True professionals are not “always positive.” Instead, they radiate intangible qualities like competence, capability, and expertise by being serious and self-assured. This is very different from the eager salesperson who attempts to communicate value by having a permanent smile plastered on his or her face. Secret #22 Competence, credibility, expertise, and value will outsell over-eagerness every time. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be proud of your product or excited about a new opportunity. I’m merely suggesting that being super-positive and highly enthusiastic is not the best way to motivate all prospects. And as you’ll see throughout Question Based Selling, being super-positive is not even the best way to motivate most prospects.

The Metaphor That Stuck In 1996, the Summer Olympic Games were held in my home city of Atlanta. As I watched athletes from all over the world perform in their respective events, I remember wondering what motivated them to compete at the highest levels. On the surface, it seemed logical to assume that these world-class athletes were driven by all the positive rewards that would go to the champion—fame, admiration, and of course, the gold medal. After training for most of their lives, who wouldn’t want to experience “the thrill of victory”? But as I watched the games unfold, it became obvious that while some athletes were motivated by positive rewards, many others were trying to avoid “the agony of defeat.” Rather than think about all the accolades that would come from success, some athletes were motivated to run even faster, and jump even higher, because they were trying to avoid an undesirable outcome. Carl Lewis, arguably one of the greatest track and field athletes of all time, and nine-time Olympic gold medalist, was an excellent example of this. After his last event in Atlanta, when he won the gold medal on his final attempt in the long jump, the sportscaster asked, “Mr. Lewis, what were you thinking about just before you jumped?” As it turned out, Carl Lewis wasn’t thinking about medals, money, or having his picture on a box of Wheaties. Instead, he said his primary motivation was that his family was in the stadium and he didn’t want to disappoint them by losing his final Olympic event.

The easiest way to describe how to harness the galvanizing power of why is with a tool I call the belief statement. For example, most of Apple’s product launches in recent years feature slick videos with commentary from Apple designers, engineers, and executives. These videos, while camouflaged as beautiful product showcases, are actually packed with statements not about what the products do but about the design thinking behind them: in essence, the tightly held beliefs with which Apple’s design team operates. We believe our users should be at the center of everything we do. We believe that a piece of technology should be as beautiful as it is functional. We believe that making devices thinner and lighter but more powerful requires innovative problem solving. Belief statements like these are so compelling for two reasons. First, the right corporate or organizational beliefs have the ability to resonate with our personal belief systems and feelings, and move us to action. In fact, the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand study revealed that nearly two out of three people are now belief-driven buyers.4 And as we saw in our discussion of buyers’ emotional motivators in chapter 3, this works even if the beliefs stated are aspirational. For example, if my vision for my future self is someone who weighs a few pounds less and is in better physical shape, a well-timed ad from a health club or fancy kitchen blender evangelizing the benefits of a healthy lifestyle may be enough to rapidly convert me. In the case of Apple, the same phenomenon results in mobs of smitten consumers arriving at stores in droves, braving long lines and paying premium prices, as if to say, “Yes! I do believe I should be at the center of everything you do! Technology should be beautiful! Thinner? Lighter? More powerful? Of course! We share the same vision! We’re both cool!” (Although these actual words are rarely spoken aloud.) The second reason belief statements are so compelling is because they help us manifest the conviction and emotion critical to delivering our message in an authentic way.

Immediately after the Franco-German war the value of ivory increased considerably; and when we look at the prices realized on large Zanzibar tusks at the public sales, we can well understand the motive power which drove the Arab ivory hunters further and further into the country from which the chief supply was derived when Dr. Livingstone met them.

Since we know people like to do business with people who are most like themselves, consider this: Excellent sales people understand that "matching and mirroring" another person’s body language is a powerful technique and subliminal way to develop trust, build rapport, and make their clients more comfortable and engaging. Subtly mirroring the postures, gestures, and body language of your client inspires a kinship of commonality.

The professional seller, the one who delivers value, who proactively works into accounts before they are shopping, who seeks to truly understand a customer’s needs, who does effective discovery work, who’s motivated to solve a customer’s problems, who tells a compelling story, who’s committed to delivering valuable outcomes—that salesperson is not going anywhere anytime

Many of the atrocities that have taken place over the last few thousand years have been the result of ‘new brain/mind’ competencies linking up with ‘old brain/mind’ motives and defences. We can even use our ‘new brain/mind’ competencies to justify our actions and give us very sophisticated ways of acting them out. Animals will defend their groups and territories at all times, but only humans can think about how to do it more effectively with guns, or sadistically by torturing those who are either not in the group or who have betrayed it. At least a third of all the world’s research money is spent on weaponry. Rich nations sell poor nations armaments, crippling their economies, maintaining tyrants and causing untold harm, with the profits from the arms sales flowing back to the rich nations. It is, of course, disastrous, but is the consequence of a fantastic ‘new brain/mind’ not being able to sort out the tribal motives of the ‘old brain/mind’ – greed and a belief in the importance of aggressive power. Even religions can feed into this tragedy.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology. When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible. At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales. Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day. We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform. Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.[431]

HILL: Will you describe the major factors which entered into the modus operandi of Mr. Ford’s mind while he was perfecting the automobile? CARNEGIE: Yes, that will be very easy. And when I describe them, you will have a clear understanding of the working principles used by all successful men, as well as a clear picture of the Ford mind, viz.: (a) Mr. Ford was motivated by a definite purpose, which is the first step in all individual achievements. (b) He stimulated his purpose into an obsession by concentrating his thoughts upon it. (c) He converted his purpose into definite plans, through the principle of Organised Individual Endeavour, and put his plans into action with unabating persistence. (d) He made use of the Master Mind principle, first, by the harmonious aid of his wife, and second, by gaining counsel from others who had experimented with internal combustion engines and methods of power transmission. Still later, of course, when he began to produce automobiles for sale, he made a still more extensive use of the Master Mind principle by allying himself with the Dodge brothers and other mechanics and engineers skilled in the sort of mechanical problems he had to solve. (e) Back of all this effort was the power of Applied Faith, which he acquired as the result of his intense desire for achievement in connection with his Definite Major Purpose.

Here’s an example from the test Marty and his students developed to distinguish optimists from pessimists: Imagine: You can’t get all the work done that others expect of you. Now imagine one major cause for this event. What leaps to mind? After you read that hypothetical scenario, you write down your response, and then, after you’re offered more scenarios, your responses are rated for how temporary (versus permanent) and how specific (versus pervasive) they are. If you’re a pessimist, you might say, I screw up everything. Or: I’m a loser. These explanations are all permanent; there’s not much you can do to change them. They’re also pervasive; they’re likely to influence lots of life situations, not just your job performance. Permanent and pervasive explanations for adversity turn minor complications into major catastrophes. They make it seem logical to give up. If, on the other hand, you’re an optimist, you might say, I mismanaged my time. Or: I didn’t work efficiently because of distractions. These explanations are all temporary and specific; their “fixability” motivates you to start clearing them away as problems. Using this test, Marty confirmed that, compared to optimists, pessimists are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. What’s more, optimists fare better in domains not directly related to mental health. For instance, optimistic undergraduates tend to earn higher grades and are less likely to drop out of school. Optimistic young adults stay healthier throughout middle age and, ultimately, live longer than pessimists. Optimists are more satisfied with their marriages. A one-year field study of MetLife insurance agents found that optimists are twice as likely to stay in their jobs, and that they sell about 25 percent more insurance than their pessimistic colleagues. Likewise, studies of salespeople in telecommunications, real estate, office products, car sales, banking, and other industries have shown that optimists outsell pessimists by 20 to 40 percent.

Animals will defend their groups and territories at all times, but only humans can think about how to do it more effectively with guns, or sadistically by torturing those who are either not in the group or who have betrayed it. At least a third of all the world’s research money is spent on weaponry. Rich nations sell poor nations armaments, crippling their economies, maintaining tyrants and causing untold harm, with the profits from the arms sales flowing back to the rich nations. It is, of course, disastrous, but is the consequence of a fantastic ‘new brain/mind’ not being able to sort out the tribal motives of the ‘old brain/mind’ – greed and a belief in the importance of aggressive power. Even religions can feed into this tragedy.