Jill Konrath quotes: the author’s awesome insights.
“Success is a decision. Dare to choose it.”
“Only hard work, authenticity, integrity and commitment get you there, but the results are game-changing.”
“Be persistent. Go after what you want and enjoy doing it.”
“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?”
“If you’re having trouble, it’s because you just don’t know how—yet!”
“Sometimes a change in perspective changes everything.”
“People who focus on ‘getting better’ goals (also known as personal bests) as opposed to performance goals have a much better chance of success.”
“To be successful, it’s critical to tackle your fears. If you don’t, they become major obstacles that limit you.”
“Eat your pride; ask for help earlier rather than later.”
“People really do want to help you, if you let them.”
“Ask your colleagues for help, early and often.”
“Ask for what you want, expect people to deliver and fully appreciate it when they do. But if they let you down, be clear on that too.”
“Eliminate multitasking to learn faster and think better.”
“Create cheat sheets to help new info stick in your brain better.”
“Here’s what it all boils down to: to become the differentiator, you need to always be learning.”
“Learning agility is a leading predictor of leadership success today—more reliable than IQ, EQ [emotional intelligence] or even leadership competencies.”
“Change is vital; improvement, the logical form of change.”
“Habits are really hard to change, and I had no idea how hard they were until I started changing small habits of mine to get more done.”
“When we try to change habits, our brains create a massive resistance. To overcome this, you need to create goals and be really clear on what you want to accomplish. The goal can be anything from freeing up more time so you can get out of the office and have fun, to working hard to earn that promotion. Once you have established that goal, you need to ask yourself what you need to do differently and come up with a positive action—one that you can start doing and not one that you should stop doing.”
“Our email is not as urgent as we think it is and it’s killing productivity. Research shows people who constantly check email are lowering their intelligence. So if we want to be really good at our sales jobs, we should not let email harm our ability to think, learn and make critical decisions for our clients.”
“Most people think they need to master time management but time management assumes that you’re in an office and not living online. In reality, salespeople live online. It’s just how we do our jobs today.”
“I actually wanted to call my book Optimize Me because I think that’s really what it’s about: it’s how to get the most from yourself. Once you protect yourself from those distractions, you need to figure out how to spend the time you’ve reclaimed. Start by asking yourself this question: what’s the most important thing I should be working on? Don’t just jump into work. By taking that time to focus, you actually do what you need to do.”
“Another thing that’s crucial, and that a lot of people don’t realize, is that our brains are not meant to sit at a computer all day long. It actually wears us out. We need to think about working our day in blocks of time focused on specific activities. Put them on your calendar. Work in blocks. Then allow yourself to take a break.”
“Trying to control our lives and to be so disciplined is perhaps one of the hardest things we ever have to do. You’re only given a certain amount of willpower per day and if you’re using it to go online and fight distractions, you wear yourself out much faster and actually reduce the quality of your thinking.”
“The more you spend time determining the effectiveness of your actions and studying different ways to interact with customers and help them realize the value of change, the more successful you will be.”
“The best sellers in the world make it look so easy, but they’ve worked hard to get to that point. And truthfully, it’s worth it.”
“All the top sellers I know possess a unique balance of positivity and negativity. They’re always optimistic about the ultimate outcomes, but they sometimes seem paranoid about everything that could possibly go wrong. That’s why they succeed.”
“As sellers, if we’re going to be successful landing the big ones, we need to expand our thinking about what’s possible.”
“I think the emphasis on the past few years has been driving more and more prospects as opposed to looking at the quality of the prospects.”
“Sales is not about volume, it’s about quality.”
“Sales is not about selling anymore, but about building trust and educating.”
“Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win.”
“Customer-focused: they know that they’ll be successful if they can help their customers achieve their goals and objectives. This also means the work to acquire business savvy.”
“Always align. This is all about relevance and risk. When you’re aligned with their critical business objectives and core beliefs, people will want to work with you.”
“Identify factors that create opportunities for your business.”
“One final thing that helps keep overwhelmed buyers moving is not to try to oversell them. Start with one thing to get them working with you on the project. By doing that, you get your foot in the door and have an opportunity to show your value, develop a relationship, find out more ways to help them, and build the deal as you go along.”
“You’ve probably never heard anyone talk about sales agility before. Sales training programs don’t even mention the word. But every top seller I know is an agile learner who knows what it takes to dive into a new situation and figure it out quickly.”
“To learn faster, chunk, sequence, connect, dump, practice, and prioritize.”
“Chunking strategies minimize mental chaos and increase recall.”
“When you’re deep in study mode, stop every 30 minutes to review what you’ve just learned. Repeat the information you just covered out loud to yourself. This helps cement it in your brain even more when you want to recall it.”
“Sales is an experiment. There’s no right or wrong, just varying degrees of effectiveness. Our job is to constantly seek ways we can increase our effectiveness.”
“Sellers who’ve embraced social media are creating new opportunities that totally bypass traditional sales channels. It’s about good selling: using all the tools that are available to you today.”
“A salesperson’s own failure to focus on key business drivers and priorities is the root cause of most sales failure.”
“Turns out, the the ability to ask insightful, thought-provoking questions was the single biggest differentiator between top performers and average reps.”
“Traditional sellers think that customers make decisions based on their product, service or solution differentiators. They get frantic when they lack capabilities that competitors have or when their pricing is too high relative to what else is on the market. Today’s seller knows that their products, services or solutions are simply tools—nothing more. They know that their customers could care less about buying new software or training their staff. They realize that customers invest in their offering because of the outcome they get. That’s why their focus is on business improvement. These top sellers are fully cognizant that their knowledge and expertise are the reasons that customers want to work with them.”
“Traditional sellers don’t have a clue that top sellers know so much more than they do about the market, operations, processes, competition, business goals and objectives, strategic imperatives and more.”
“Keep developing your expertise; it sets you apart.”
“The best sales questions have your expertise wrapped into them.”
“Your products, services or solution are secondary to your knowledge, expertise and the difference you make for your customers.”
“You have to drop your sales mentality and start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you.”
“To win more sales, stop selling!”
“Sales is an outcome, not a goal. It’s a function of doing numerous things right, starting from the moment you target a potential prospect until you finalize the deal.”
“To make decisions easier, offer fewer options.”
“What differentiates sellers today is their ability to bring fresh ideas.”
“Become an expert on your biggest competitor—the status quo.”
“Insightful questions build credibility and deepen relationships.”
“Know your buyer’s journey so you can align with it.”
“According to research from the Sales Benchmark Index, 60% of all forecasted opportunities are lost to ‘no decision.'”
“If you’re constantly working around the clock it is exhausting and you are not your best self. The best thing these strategies taught me personally, was to limit the number of hours I was working. My goal was to hold my income steady, but not work so much.”
“Now, I’m working on reducing the number of hours even more to see if I can still earn the same income in fewer hours. I started out this project really crazy-busy. And it’s almost as if I wore that as a badge of honor. I was proud to be crazy busy and proud that everybody ‘needed’ me. It made me feel invaluable. But what I found out is being crazy-busy is something I control, and I’m not at my best when I’m out of control. I really believe people can sell more in less time.”
“I am passionate about what I do. I’ve worked with thousands of inside and outside salespeople over the years. I love solving sales challenges. And, I’m willing to experiment to find out what works.”
