So by my lights, the number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely like them. There’s a wise adage that fits this logic well: people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

to be genuinely interested in other people is a most important quality for a sales-person to possess — for any person, for that matter.

The salespeople who scored in the top 10 percent for optimism performed a whopping 88 percent better in sales than the reps in the top 10 percent for pessimism. Dr. Seligman found that the power of optimism held in other professions, too. He concluded that in general, optimistic salespeople performed an impressive 20 to 40 percent better than pessimistic salespeople.

I hope that by this time you understand that I do a lot of things that other salesmen don’t do. And I also hope you understand that what I do works for everybody. I am good to my customers. They know I really care about them and they believe in me. But I don’t do anything for love. I do it for money. I have often said that the thing I like to do most in the world is sleep. It’s my hobby and it’s my favorite occupation, so when I have to get out of bed in the morning, somebody is going to pay for it.

When we love something, emotion often drives our actions.

This is the gift and the challenge entrepreneurs face every day. The companies we dream of and build from scratch are part of us and intensely personal. They are our families. Our lives.

But the entrepreneurial journey is not for everyone. Yes, the highs are high and the rewards can be thrilling. But the lows can break your heart. Entrepreneurs must love what they do to such a degree that doing it is worth sacrifice and, at times, pain. But doing anything else, we think, would be unimaginable

One interview technique that I’d used to sort the good from the bad was to ask a series of questions about hiring, training, and managing sales reps. Typically, it would go like this: Ben: “What do you look for in a sales rep?” Candidate: “They need to be smart, aggressive, and competitive. They need to know how to do complex deals and navigate organizations.” Ben: “How do you test for those things in an interview?” Candidate: “Umm, well, I hire everybody out of my network.” Ben: “Okay, once you get them on board, what do you expect from them?” Candidate: “I expect them to understand and follow the sales process, I expect them to master the product, I expect them to be accurate in their forecasting. . . .” Ben: “Tell me about the training program that you designed to achieve this.” Candidate: “Umm.” They would then proceed to make something up as they went along.

Relationship Selling implies long-term commitment, common goals, mutual respect, ongoing trust and cooperation. Informal relationships, many a time, get converted into formal alliances also, helping joint-marketing and co-branding. Establishing a relationship is a series of steps, by and large in sequence only. Jumping steps or changing the sequence could be counterproductive.

Most salespeople think that selling is “closing.” It isn’t. Selling is opening.

Despite what some people would have you believe, no one is born a salesperson. Stop trying to find “naturals.” Rather than looking for salespeople, look for people who believe in your vision and want to build relationships.

When healthy people fall in love, they buy a bunch of flowers or an engagement ring and go and Do Something About It. When poets fall in love, they make a list of their loved one’s body parts and attach similes to them.

You must learn bow to handle rejection. When I repeat that in a seminar, I can feel the physiology in the room change. Is there anything in the human language with more sting than the tiny word “no”? If you’re in sales, what’s the difference between making $100,000 and making $25,000? The main difference is learning how to handle rejection so that this fear no longer stops you from taking action. The best salesmen are those who are rejected the most. They’re the ones who can take any “no” and use it as a prod to go onto the next “yes.

A relationship is a sales process, and sometimes you must buy to sell, and when you sell it is to the benefit of both of you.

Susan was a tough-minded romantic. She wanted to fall in love with a book. She always had reasons for her devotions, as an astute reader would, but she was, to her credit, probably the most emotional one among us. Susan could fall in love with a book in more or less the way one falls in love with a person. Yes, you can provide, if asked, a list of your loved one’s lovable qualities: he’s kind and funny and smart and generous and he knows the names of trees.

But he’s also more than amalgamation of qualities. You love him, the entirety of him, which can’t be wholly explained by even the most exhaustive explication of his virtues. And you love him no less for his failings. O.K., he’s bad with money, he can be moody sometimes, and he snores. His marvels so outshine the little complaints as to render them ridiculous.

I've always loved getting sold [on something]. That's true of all good salesmen. All good salesmen love to get taken in by a pitch.