Forget ABC (Always Be Closing): The Best Sales Quotes for 2025

Sales quotes offer inspiration and insights into what sales is all about.

Many people and entire companies get it wrong.

Instead of heeding the wisdom of these sales quotes and taking a people-focused approach to selling, they make the mistake of believing sales is about nothing more than the bottom line.

This causes them, ironically, to make less money than they would have by understanding this truth:

The process of sales is nothing more than figuring out what people want and giving it to them.

All of these sales quotes are based on that notion. Embrace them and watch your business soar.

This sales quote will narrow your focus

“I have a saying I use to train sales teams, ‘The pain is the pitch.’ If you can articulate the pain a prospect is feeling accurately, they will almost always buy what you are offering. A prospect must have a painful problem for us to solve and charge money for our solution.”

—Alex Hormozi

When I do sales calls for my business, the first question I ask is:

“What are the pain points or problems you’re dealing with that led to you reaching out to me?”

It sets the tone for the call and also establishes the real reason why they are there. There’s a reason they reached out and the closer you get to the real reason, the more likely you’ll be able to close because you understand the problem and can make your product or service the bridge to the solution.

I spoke with a woman who wanted to make money writing about fitness and landing some online coaching clients. I asked my usual questions but still didn’t feel like I got to the root of the issue, so I asked again:

“Are you sure there isn’t anything else that’s holding you back right now?”

She sighed and said “Well, actually there’s one more thing. My husband and I started a business that made 7 figures, but it all collapsed after the pandemic.” Her deepest fear was putting time and effort into a failed strategy.

After I understood the true pain, I talked about how she could avoid same pitfalls. She was convinced. Not only did she join, but she began to thrive immediately, which leads to my last point.

Harping on people’s pain points might feel cruel or manipulative, but if you believe that your product or service can help solve their problem, then you are meeting a customer’s need.

The best salespeople are givers, not takers

“To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.”

—Daniel Pink, “To Sell is Human”

Say you were tasked to give someone a check for a million dollars.

Would you be afraid to reach out to them? Would you be passive and timid about getting their attention or getting them to accept the check?

Or, since you know you’re helping this person, would you go out of your way to be sure they got what they clearly want?

If you want to sell better, treat your product like that million-dollar check.

First, this means you make sure the product you’re selling is worth the money.

If you’re the creator of the product, build something that delivers 10x the value of what you charge (more on that below). This will make both parties feel like it’s a fair exchange.

If you’re a salesperson, choose a company with products that provide the same level of value.

Some sales managers make their sales people review testimonials of successful customers before they hop on their calls for the day. Sales increase because they have more conviction.

Even if you have to use persuasive techniques to get people to buy, first and foremost always be looking to serve and help them above all else.

Related:

This sales quote is my favorite psychological principle

“Consistency is key in persuasion. Once people make a commitment, they are more likely to stick to it.”

 —Robert Cialdini

Salespeople like to use “qualifying questions” to get people to commit to labels the salesperson will remind them of later.

I coach writers on becoming full-time professionals.

I like to ask these questions before I make the pitch:

Ask open-ended questions and do way more listening than talking. Done this way, the prospect will convince themselves that working with you is the right decision and, if you do it right, they’ll try to convince you that they’re worthy of the opportunity.

They’ll start qualifying themselves to you by repeating how serious they are, how they are tired of experiencing the pain, and how this is finally the time they are going to change.

After that, drive home the consistency by repeating their answers back to them and getting them to double-down on their commitments, like this:

“So Mary. Just to make sure we’re on the same page: You’re looking to grow your writing income now because you’re tired of letting your life pass by without pursuing a dream that’s important to you. You’re ready to take action on this now because you’re getting older and you don’t want to have regrets at the end of your life. And you’re dead serious about getting this problem fixed now. Does that sound about right?”

First, this makes them feel understood. Second, you just reminded them of all the qualities they claimed to have, which makes it harder to back out when it’s time for the pitch.

When it gets to the “objection handling” part of the conversation, don’t be afraid to bring up their past commitments.

Let’s say they reply with “I need to think.”

You can say something like, “Totally get it. Earlier though, you said this was something that needed to happen now and you’re done sitting on the sidelines. Is there anything else about [product/service] that I can clarify for you?”

Continue to listen and probe with questions until they convince themselves to buy.

Stop trying so hard to make the sale (do this instead)

“People hate to be sold to…but they love to buy!”

—Jeffrey Gitomer

This sales quote is about masterminding your mindset and understanding the mindset of your buyers.

Abandon the belief that you have to get everyone to buy.

Abandon the belief that you’re trying to get people to buy.

Instead, adopt the mindset that you’re coaching them to make a decision that will benefit their life—even if that means saying no to you.

You’re not trying to reach everyone.

You’re trying to find the people you can help and put them in a position where buying is a no-brainer. 

Figure out what they want first and then decide whether or not your product or service is a good fit.

If it is, you’re simply making them aware of how life will get better when they buy.

You can do this in the following ways:

When it comes to sales, understand this truth about humans

“People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.”

—Zig Ziglar

People spend tons of money on purchases that make them feel good.

For example, people will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home and go into debt for it because of the pride and warm feelings that come with home ownership.

Understanding what motivates people is the key to sales. 

Drew Eric Whitman came up with “The Life Force 8” in his best-selling book, “Cashvertising,” and says these are the eight basic human instincts hardwired into every person:

People also have these “learned human wants”:

I’ve applied these principles to increase sales.

My sales increased dramatically when I focused on how their lives would change. When I highlighted the emotional reasons for buying my product.

Mostly, I started telling stories about what it’s like to live the writer’s lifestyle and help them see it for themselves.

I talk about how awesome it is to reach tons of people and be admired (social approval). About how much more comfortable and free life is after you have a business that provides consistent income (survival, enjoyment of life, life extension).

I share how you can better provide for the ones you love by having more time and money to care for them (care and protection of loved ones). I might mention the feeling of proudly telling all your doubting friends and acquaintances that you’re now a professional writer (to be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses).

I’ll also give them good reasons to buy now, like a special deal that disappears soon (bargain), or mention how my systems will help them save time by knowing the exact strategies to use (efficiency). I’ll mention how they can use the system in just [x] amount of time at their own pace (convenience).

Spend less time talking about what your product does and more time on what it will do for them.

You don’t need “sales skills” when you have this

“If you really believe in something, you don’t have to ‘sell’ it.”

—Leila Hormozi

This sales quote came from a video where Leila shared the sales process she used to grow multiple eight-figure companies.

In this section of the video, she was talking about an underrated yet important aspect of selling when you’re on a sales call: vocal tonality. The tone of your voice and the way you emphasize words frame the conversation. Salespeople with better tonality make more sales.

According to Leila, there are two ways to fix your vocal tonality:

• You can train yourself into the right tonality
• You can trick yourself into the right tonality

You can drill vocal tonality techniques all day, but this process takes a long time to learn. It’s much faster to trick yourself into the right tonality. How? By having conviction. If you’re convinced the product works the tonality will come naturally.

She used this example to illustrate. Leila moved to California in her twenties to become part of the booming fitness scene. She loved it. Warm weather, palm trees, ambitious and beautiful people, a city buzzing with activity.

If someone asked her whether or not they should move to California, would she need to memorize some script or practice her tonality? Nope. 

She’d be so excited about it that “selling” someone on moving to California would be easy. She’d start gushing about how great the weather is. She’d speak with excitement when she talked about what it’s like to live in this melting pot of movers and shakers. 

The person listening to her would want to move there instead of feeling like they were sold the idea.

If you believe your product works, you’ll have a much easier time selling because your belief shows. You’re so convinced that you don’t need to convince others in the traditional sense. You’re persuading them to buy—yes—but it comes across as you sharing an amazing opportunity vs. you trying to make a sale.

There’s no shortcut to this. You have to have a product that makes this possible.

The best way to sell? Make selling irrelevant

“You’re doing sales cause you failed at marketing. You’re doing marketing cause you failed at product.”

—Naval Ravikant

There’s no such thing as an organization that doesn’t need a good sales process, but it’s important to understand that sales is downstream of marketing and marketing is downstream of product. And product is king.

Why is Apple a $3 trillion company?

Is it because of their sales and marketing strategy, or is it because they made world-class products that changed the fabric of reality itself?

Of course Steve Jobs was a great marketer and salesman—one of the greatest marketers to ever live.  His tagline of “1,000 songs in your pocket,” to describe the first iPod puts most copywriters to shame. But the marketing came downstream from the product itself.

The second you got your hands on an iPod, it took all of a few minutes to realize you were never going back to a CD player ever again. It was a product built to spread like contagion.

Someone would see you using it, ask you what it was, and you’d gush about it, just like Leila would gush about moving to California.

Because you’re emphatically describing how cool it is to the other person, they buy it. And then the process repeats itself until it becomes a worldwide revelation.

The interesting thing about Jobs? He conceptualized the entire concept for all of the products that would become culturally iconic and sell like wildfire before he put any of them out:

• The iPod
• The iPad
• The iPhone
• The iMac
• The Macbook

No surveys. No focus groups. It went against the conventional start-up wisdom, which was to come up with a minimum viable product, lean heavily on marketing and sales, and iterate the product until it sold well. Not jobs. He had conviction and went to great lengths to make sure the products were killer.

Organizations that struggle with sales often do so because their product sucks. When your product sucks all of your other metrics go down. Churn is high because as soon as people interact with your product, they don’t want to keep using it. Lifetime value is low (LTV) because people don’t stay.

Turns out it’s in your financial best interest to build (or sell) the best product possible.

Related:

How To Charge $2,000 Per Client and Build a 6-Figure Business Fast

What these sales quotes have in common

My big takeaway? Selling is the exact opposite of what most people think it is.

Sales is about giving, not taking.

Understanding, not manipulating.

Helping, not coercing.

It’s not even in your best interest to sell in an unethical way because, even if you make some money short-term, you will destroy your business in the long-term. Because you tarnish your reputation.

It’s a shame most people don’t understand how sales really works and how much it benefits their lives. Someone sold them everything they use in their day-to-day lives for more convenience, ease, happiness, entertainment, pleasure, utility, and even joy. 

They don’t understand how sales works because they never feel like they’ve been sold to (when it comes to the products they love).

Remember, people love to buy, but they hate being sold to. It’s your job to make them feel like they’re doing the former instead of the latter. 

Master that…and you’ve mastered sales.