11 Sales Cartoons That Make Us Laugh

Summary:

• Sales cartoons can bring levity to your day and even deliver some useful tips or reminders.
• Utilize sales strategy and teamwork to create "moments of magic" in sales, avoiding reliance on shortcuts.
• Recognize quotas as important but flexible, focusing on progress tracking and adjustments for improvement.
• Invest in developing tailored sales scripts and training to enhance rep performance and engagement.
• Prioritize hiring and development of sales talent, focusing on growth and potential rather than just innate skills.
• Foster empathy within sales teams to understand and align with prospects' needs for better connection and success.
• Encourage a team-oriented approach and healthy competition, emphasizing support and positive reinforcement.

When you're having a rough day, laughter makes everything better. If you're having the best day in the world, laughter takes all the good and amplifies it to an even higher level. Whether we're commiserating or celebrating, laughter is truly the best medicine.

As such, laughter is a close friend and ally for salespeople as they ride the rollercoaster of emotion that comes with their career. It helps strengthen and build persistence, resolve, and resilience.

And when you face rejection during a cold call, or your deal falls through, laughter can make learning lessons from those experiences easier.

"If you can laugh at yourself, you are going to be fine. If you allow others to laugh with you, you will be great."—Martin Neimoller

This quote from Martin Neimoller is a good reminder to not take yourself too seriously. To help, we wanted to bring a littler comic relief to your day—literally.

We've rounded up 11 sales cartoons and comics that are funny and relatable for all salespeople. Most importantly though, they remind us that we share common struggles that are felt by our sales peers, managers, and leaders.

11 Sales Cartoons

1. Something Magical

It's nice to hope for some magic, but you shouldn't bank on it happening. There's no way to cut corners and bypass all the hard work needed to generate new pipeline, schedule demos, and close deals.

Ensure your team has a robust sales strategy that provides a clear pathway for them to achieve goals and allocate their time on a daily basis. With that, your entire sales organization can align behind the same priorities and goals, and work together towards the same result.

Once you get that engine up and running, and your reps are adhering to the strategy, that's when the moments of magic will start to shine through.

2. The Quota Quandary

For your reps, quotas may feel like a matter of life and death. It's good to remind them that, while they're absolutely still important, there's a still little bit of wiggle room.

After all, sales is a rollercoaster—some months are going to be better or worse than others. As your reps ride this rollercoaster, ensure you're tracking their progress closely and monitoring the relevant sales metrics that matter.

If they're struggling to attain quota, this will allow you to understand why. For example, maybe they simply aren't making enough cold calls. Once you know that, you can work with the rep to make necessary adjustments.

3. Stick to the Script!

A sales call script is only as good as the person who writes it, and the person who reads it. That is, it's never enough to simply download a script template from the internet, turn around, and immediately hand it off to your team.

Take time to think through your script. Gather insights from your reps about the sales cycle and what they've learned from moving deals through it. Come up with creative and engaging ways your reps can handle objections.

If you're looking for expert guidance on sales calls scripts, download our eBook Outbound Sales: 10 Strategies to Close More Deals. It brings together insights, strategies, tactics, advice, templates, and scripts from five outbound sales experts to help you level up your efforts.

4. Superstar for the Sales Team

Make sure the talent you hire is the best you can get, whether you're looking for your next great Account Executive, Sales Development Representative, VP, manager, or C-suite executive. And if someone shows up to the interview dressed as a magician, you might want to consider not hiring them. Unless they're a really, really great magician.

The truth is, the amount of time, energy, and resources you invest into developing your sales reps is what makes them great. Some people will have an innate talent for sales and have desirable sales traits. Others won't.

It's up to you as the leader to ensure everyone is growing, no matter their skill set or level. Invest in your team, and the ROI will be more than worth it both personally and professionally.

5. This is How We Do It

It's not enough to know what your goal is. How are you going to get there? For example, let's say your goal is to drive $5 million in closed-won revenue this year. You can't just say to your team: "OK, go hit that $5 million goal!"

Have a well-planned sales strategy that guides you toward that goal. Clearly define the daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals your reps need to hit in order to stay on track to achieve $5 million in revenue. Last, ensure you're keeping them properly motivated along the way.

Not only will this help motivate your sales team, it also ensures you know what specific tactics succeed or fail at closing deals. You can iterate and course-correct as needed.

6. Flip Your Perspective

Rarely do successful sales people steamroll their way through conversations and interactions with prospects. To do so would spell certain doom for any deal moving through the sales cycle.

You have to be able to shift perspectives and understand the needs, wants, challenges, and pain points of the prospect. In a word, you need empathy.

Empathy is critical to sales success because it helps forge a strong connection between your reps and their prospects. If you want to close deals and lay the foundation for lifelong fans of your product, which every salesperson wants, you need to be able to shift your perspective.

7. A Sale Is a Sale?

There's nothing more exciting than getting a deal signed and marking it "closed-won" in your CRM. But you shouldn't try to close a deal at all costs. It's a major sales mistake to try and close the deal just for the sake of closing it.

Instead, work hard to ensure that both you and your prospect are benefitting. From their side, they're getting a helpful product that will enable them to overcome specific challenges. From your side, you're helping them and netting a solid ROI on your time, energy, and resources spent getting the deal signed.

Don't get fleeced! Yes, that pun was intended. No, I'm not sure if it was a good one, but I couldn't resist.

8. Successful Sales Teams

Don't play the "lone wolf." It's a common sales mistake you see at some companies. It might sound cool, but it doesn't often pan out for your individual success, and it almost never spells success for your team. Remember: you function as one part of a sales unit.

In a similar vein, competition within a sales team or sales organization can be highly motivating. You need to ensure this sense of competition isn't antagonistic, rude, or overly aggressive. That can end up doing more harm than good.

Encourage positivity. Empower your reps to help each other out. Let it be known that management and leadership is always available if needed. Foster fun competitions that lift everyone instead of putting people down.

9. Frustration Management

Your reps are going to face adversity. They'll be told "No," prospects might ghost them during demos or meetings, and some may even be barked at on the phone. This is all part of the territory that comes with sales.

Remind them that, even though it can be difficult to deal with, this is a normal thing. Train them to control their emotions and keep outbursts in check by investing in wellness activities like meditation, for example.

It's OK to laugh and cry. But like the sales cartoon here says, it's never OK to throw your computer out the window. Literally or figuratively.

10. Imperfect Performance Monitoring

Data and analytics take you from the abstract world of "I think" and firmly place you in the concrete realm of "I know." Don't just peek through the blinds—know for certain how each and every rep is performing, where they could improve, and where they can double down on successful efforts.

Track the most important sales metrics to your company, keep them in a detailed report, and continually evaluate the report with both your team and superiors. It can be challenging, but partnering with the right tech partners, like PhoneBurner, can make data collection and analysis incredibly easy.

11. Trust the Process

There's a reason you have a sales cycle established. If you want to bake a cake, you can’t just mix everything into a bowl at random and then throw it into the oven. You’re going to get something that closely resembles cake. It’s not a cake though.

For the same reason, it's never enough to simply trust the sales process blindly without thoroughly understanding your sales cycle and how to move deals through it. Know it like the back of your hand—know how to combine all the ingredients so you get the most beautiful cake ever baked. Don't leave it up to chance.

We Love Sales Cartoons

At PhoneBurner, sales cartoons are a big part of our day. We send them to each other on Slack, they get thrown into webinar presentations, and it's why we wanted to write this whole blog about sales cartoons. We're also very into funny sales memes.

Our hope is that these sales cartoons can be an equally important part of your day. Use them to give everyone a quick laugh, bring down stress levels, and prompt meaningful conversations about your processes.

And if we've missed any hilarious sales cartoons on this list, reach out to us on LinkedIn! We always want to hear from you.