Even in “normal” times, working in sales is challenging. From the never-ending need to find new leads to the pressure to hit your sales targets to the frustration of getting left on “read” by a lead you thought was ready to buy, there are plenty of sources of stress and anxiety.
Selling a product or service isn’t easy–especially since even the best ones don’t sell themselves.
These days, though, the move to remote work has brought new challenges. It’s easy to feel disconnected from your team when you only interact with them on Slack. And those interactions can be a bit dry at times, a seemingly endless series of status updates on pending deals.
So, how can you reconnect with your fellow sales reps, boost morale, and inject a bit of life into your Slack comms? By sharing memes that capture the highs and lows of B2B sales.
Whether your team is across the country or down the hall, here are 20 relatable, funny sales memes that will unite your Slack channel.
20 Relatable Sales Memes to Share with Your Team
1. The Value of Patience
Sales take patience. Some leads will want to buy right away; others are going to need time. While “Call me in X months” is sometimes a polite way of saying no, your prospect could still have a real interest in making a purchase down the road. Maybe they need time for their cash flow to improve or maybe your product or service will make more sense for them at a certain point of the year.
The fact is, though, “Call me in X months” can be an opportunity–if you have the right mindset, patience, and can maintain sales motivation. Plus, having a tech stack that tracks leads and reminds you exactly when to follow up doesn’t hurt, either.
2. Facing the Competition
Acknowledging the competition is one of the toughest things about working in sales. There will always–and we mean, always–be another option for your potential customers. And sometimes, the grass might seem greener with the other guy, particularly if the prospect’s primary aim is to land lower sales quotes.
The key is to take everything in stride and not react with hurt or jealous emotions when a customer considers other options. If you’re confident about the product or service you’re offering and can communicate the benefits professionally, the customers you’re meant to work with tend to have a way of sticking around.
3. The Weirdness of Timing
Timing is everything in sales, particularly for anyone who sells over the phone. You never know how you’re catching somebody when you make a cold call.
The same customer who might be short with you and hang up within 30 seconds when you try them first thing on a Monday morning might very well welcome your call on a Thursday afternoon.
Not sure when the best time to reach your prospects is? Check out our Ultimate Cold Calling Guide for Salespeople and Founders for cold calling tips and ideal times to dial.
4. Dealing with Nerves (and Not Staring Too Long at the Notes in Your CRM)
When you’re psyching yourself up to make some cold calls or warm calls, it’s easy to overthink and let your nerves get the best of you. While many prospects are pleasant to chat with, there are certain people and industry verticals that tend to be more challenging to connect with–especially on the first call for sales outreach.
Even well into a business relationship, tough calls must sometimes be made, whether to resolve an issue, address customer concerns, or communicate a rise in rates. In these cases, the best course of action is often to simply make the call and get it over with.
Avoid overthinking and staring at notes in your CRM system for too long. Even in the worst-case scenario, you can learn from your mistakes–and use that knowledge to improve your sales calls in the future.
5. Summoning Courage
Successful salespeople must be able to summon courage on command. Working in a profession that demands you constantly interact with and meet new people to generate more sales, even during a pandemic, requires an ability to build yourself up. You have to go into meetings brimming with confidence, even if you don’t feel that way on the inside.
That said, it’s perfectly okay to quietly shed a tear if a meeting goes poorly. We’re all human, after all.
6. Dogged Persistence
There’s a lot of money to be made in sales, but it’s often not of the get-rich-quick variety. Sales is about persistence. For outside reps, it’s about pounding pavement and logging miles; for inside sales reps, it’s about making so many calls that you might as well never hang up the phone.
Persistence can pay off, though. Over time, a good sales representative will gain experience and knowledge that can help guide them through a variety of situations. In other words, your “dogged” tenacity will see you through.
7. Overcoming Monotony
A corollary of persistence is overcoming the monotony that can be part of sales work. Lead prospecting can mean hours of phone calls, which can also mean hours of leaving voicemails and hearing the same few strains of hold music.
It can mean eventually developing a Zen-like calm, maybe even being able to improvise lyrics when hearing the iconic Cisco hold music so many companies use.
8. Getting Past Gatekeepers
A large portion of receptionists and executive assistants are perfectly nice. They understand that it’s part of business for their boss to listen to sales pitches for products or services. Fielding incoming sales calls is all in a day’s work (or at least, it should be).
However, sometimes you’ll encounter a gatekeeper who takes their job a bit too seriously. They act as though they’ve been granted some kind of top-secret clearance and have been hired for one job and one job only: making sure you never get through to the decision-maker.
These opponents can be bested, though. All receptionists, executive assistants, and gatekeepers have times of day when they’re not standing guard (AKA not manning the phones). If you still can’t get through to a decision-maker, it might be worth reaching out to your prospect in other ways, such as social media, email, or in-person at a local mixer.
9. Speaking Up
With the elimination of cubicles in recent decades and the rise of open-concept layouts, offices can easily get pretty noisy. Even if you’re working from home, it can sometimes be tricky to find a quiet space to conduct your sales calls.
To be considerate to others–and perhaps to also discourage a cacophony that makes it impossible for anyone to hear anyone–salespeople will sometimes speak in lowered voices. If you find yourself trying to keep it down, be sure to speak loud enough that the customer can hear you–or you’ll end up frustrating everyone involved.
10. Listening
There’s a difference between talking with someone and talking at them. If you find yourself doing all–or most–of the talking while on the phone with a prospect or customer, it often means something’s wrong. Perhaps they aren’t engaged in the conversation, which can quickly spell doom in sales.
Silence can also mean a customer isn’t comfortable enough to talk, which isn’t good either. Sales means having a two-way conduit of information and, ideally, listening more than you talk. It’s better to be having a customer throwing out objections left and right than saying nothing at all.
11. Accepting Product Imperfection
In sales, part of the job description involves trying to move products or services that aren’t 100% perfect. (After all, a truly perfect solution might sell itself.)
That said, imperfection is a perfectly natural part of sales–and life. Products and services don’t have to be flawless to improve someone’s life or make the world a better place.
12. Playing the Hand You Were Dealt
The best sales professionals don’t wait for a perfect product or service to come their way. They work with whatever it is they’re selling and find an angle. They learn to read the needs and desires of the other people sitting at the table (AKA their customers). They play the hands they’re dealt.
So, rather than getting hung up on the features that aren’t yet ready, for example, it’s better to focus on how the product can benefit a prospect in its current form.
13. Shrugging Off Negative Customer Responses
Sometimes, sales can feel a bit like shouting into a void. When the majority of your cold calls aren’t returned or your emails get deleted without being opened, it’s hard not to get demoralized.
Or, when a prospect does reply, it might be a request to unsubscribe or be removed from a sales list. Ouch.
This type of rejection can sting quite a bit. Especially since the most dedicated sales reps (like yourself) aren’t just mindlessly using templates. Perhaps you thoughtfully curated a list of ideal customers before reaching out. Or went out of your way to personalize every call and email, logging detailed notes in Salesforce or whatever CRM you might be using.
The best thing for any sales team member to do is what the man in the picture above does: Grin, bear it, and move on.
14. Easing Up
There are a lot of great products these days, with innovations like cloud-based computing, artificial intelligence, and automation ushering in a broad suite unthinkable even a decade ago.
Whatever a person might be selling, it’s easy to get excited–and some degree of enthusiasm is probably good for customers to see. It shows confidence and a belief in one’s product or service and can build trust. But there’s a fine line you should toe carefully–where zeal can turn off customers and suppress B2B sales.
In short, be excited, but don’t be this guy.
15. Rapidly Shifting Course
A lot of times, attempting to talk to a sales lead is fairly straightforward. If they pick up the phone, they’ve probably got a few minutes to spare, provided a value proposition seems worth their time.
Every once in a while, however, a prospective customer will pick up the line, only to say that this isn’t a great time to talk, but they’d be happy to talk at another. Maybe it’s a ruse to get off the phone, maybe not. Either way, the wise salesperson who’s just been told to call back in five minutes does exactly that.
16. Accepting the Participation Trophy
For weathering all of the stresses and challenges of sales, there can be big rewards. Some of these are concrete bonuses–like a large commission check and financial security after closing a big deal; while others are intangible benefits, such as the joy of connecting a customer with a product or service that is going to help them immeasurably.
Sometimes, though, you miss out on a major payoff when a deal falls through. When a customer gets cold feet late in the sales cycle and backs out, it means you’ve just lost out on a commission for whatever blood, sweat, and energy you’ve invested.
In this scenario, all you can do is take a breath and pat yourself on the back for a job almost well done. Great sales representatives move forward, learning from the experience and applying it to the next deal.
And hey, if you’re lucky, maybe one of your colleagues will reward you with a participation trophy in meme form.
17. Laughing at a Bad Sales Manager Who’s the Stuff of Sales Memes
Salespeople sometimes get promoted into managerial roles because of their sales–and not leadership–abilities. And sometimes, it’s not even that. People can become managers in the sales world based on who they know, who they’re related to, or what they might have done on an athletic field 20 years ago.
It’s not particularly fair to the people unlucky enough to work under these sales managers, but it definitely happens.
In these kinds of situations, sales humor can be a great way to cope, as can perspective. Go back 40 years and these sorts of bosses would have been lucky to have been moving used Buicks.
18. Knowing When to Leave
Sometimes, new sales jobs take a little while to get used to. It can be challenging to learn sales scripts, familiarize yourself with the product, or gain enough confidence and expertise to sell deftly in a new industry.
In most cases, tolerating short-term discomfort and sticking it out can make all the difference. Even jobs that feel like a nightmare during your first week can turn into a dream once you master the product, learn the market, and refine your sales pitch.
Other times, however, a dumpster fire’s a dumpster fire. You might realize you were lied to during the hiring process or that, in some other way, the company isn’t what it seemed. You might learn that the product or service you’re selling is illegal, unethical, or nonexistent. Or you might get shorted on commissions or salary.
Whatever the case, there’s no shame in walking away from a bad sales job. Many successful salespeople have a job or two in their past they wouldn’t have taken if they could do it again. It makes for a good story, but not much else.
19. Riding a Hot Streak
For all of the struggles that can be part of sales, one of the great joys is when everything comes together and, suddenly, it’s easy.
These are the moments when the stars align. Sales begin to stack up one after another, you seemingly can’t say the wrong things, and every commission check is larger than the previous one.
The only downside? Forecasting can’t always predict when these times will arrive, nor how long they’ll last. All you can do is sit back and enjoy the ride while it lasts.
20. Generating Leads
Lead generation services get a bad rap–and, sometimes, it’s well deserved. Some unscrupulous operators sell the same lead many, many times over. In these unfortunate situations, the only option a salesperson has is to call the lead the minute it hits their inbox. Even then, the quality of such leads is dubious: they’re likely not qualified, could be part of a spate of cold leads, or might not even be a real person.
Accordingly, fly-by-night lead generation or referral services are best avoided. A better bet is to look for trusted sales tools and Chrome extensions that allow you to build high-quality lead lists with verified contact information.
An Easier Way to Generate Leads For Your Business
As any number of the best sales memes would attest, the daily grind of sales can be tricky to navigate. But having the right tools at your disposal makes all of it a little easier.
At Datanyze, we understand how challenging sales can be, from the moment a prospective lead surfaces to the close of a deal. For us, the work starts before all of this, with our focus on connecting B2B sales reps with better, and more qualified, leads.
That’s why Datanyze helps salespeople, sales development representatives (SDRs), and even small business owners find and connect with B2B prospects. Our Google Chrome extension allows contact information to be pulled directly from LinkedIn.
Datanyze gives you access to an ethically-sourced database with contact details for more than 120 million business professionals–including 63 million direct line phone numbers.
Ready to take your sales team to the next level to hit your sales targets? Start using Datanyze for free today!
