Discover the best
sales quotes

I am concerned about any attrition in customer traffic at Starbucks, but I don't want to use the economy, commodity prices or consumer confidence as an excuse.

Starbucks is committed to evolving and enhancing our customer experience with innovative and wholesome food offerings.

Customers have different need states and life experiences.

The rules of engagement around building a brand have changed significantly over the past 10 to 15 years. Where companies at one time could spread their message through traditional marketing, consumers now seek an enduring emotional connection with the companies they patronize. The foundation of that connection is the most important characteristic of building a world-class brand: trust. Trust with your people and trust with your customers.

The Starbucks customer and the Teavana customer are two very different customers, two different need states that are highly complementary.

We need to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers. That is my new battle cry. Live and breathe Starbucks the way our customers do.

Customers don't always know what they want. The decline in coffee-drinking was due to the fact that most of the coffee people bought was stale and they weren't enjoying it. Once they tasted ours and experienced what we call the third place ... a gathering place between home and work where they were treated with respect.. they found we were filling a need they didn't know they had.

Customers must recognize that you stand for something.

Post-9/11, we saw an immediate uptick in the amount of people in our stores, all over the country. People wanted that human connection. We are not going to fracture the Starbucks experience.

I found my customers appreciated a straightforward approach. They would buy if I made my pitch and asked for their order without a lot of beating around the bush.

Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that's going aswamp in its own sludge.

Others marveled that I could work twelve or fourteen hours a day at a busy convention, then entertain customers until two or three o'clock in the morning, and still be out of bed early, ready to collar my next client.

If you work just for money, you'll never make it, but if you love what you're doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.

We provide food that customers love, day after day after day. People just want more of it.

Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself.

I didn't try to force an order on a soda fountain operator when I could see that his business had fallen off because of cold weather and he didn't need the damn cups. My philosophy was one of helping my customer, and if I couldn't sell him by helping him improve his own sales, I felt I wasn't doing my job.

That's the name of the game ... pleasing the customer. If we ever lose sight of that fact, we've lost the ball game.

The definition of salesmanship is the gentle art of letting the customer have it your way.

Too many salesmen, I found, would make a good presentation and convince the client, but they couldn't recognize that critical moment when they should have stopped talking.

I can understand it, perfectly. But I refuse to accept it. This company has already squeezed me out of pennies. Now, the minute things get a little tough, I'm supposed to sacrifice dollars. Well, I'm not doing it. You can have your damned job with its ten percent pay cut. I'm quittin' and that's that.

I've been in the kitchens of a lot of restaurants and drive-ins selling Multimixers around the country, I told them, and I have never seen anything to equal the potential of this place of yours. Why don't you open a series of units like this? It would be a gold mine for you and for me, too, because every one would boost my Multimixer sales

I used to comb through the advertisements in the local newspaper for notices of house sales in the wealthier suburbs – River Forest, Hinsdale, and Wheaton. I haunted these sales and picked up pieces of elegant furniture at bargain basement prices.

A salesman without a product is like a violinist without a bow.

I proceeded on the strength of my salesman's instinct and my subjective assessment of people.