There’s a lot of shortcomings when sales are automated. In most businesses, it’s a high-touch 1-1 conversation where you are attempting to bring value to the other person. It’s not a LinkedIn messenger bot that is going to do the trick.

Numbers don’t lie and sales is absolutely the foundation of your business. There is simply no other way.

Your religion in sales has to be attention. Before you even think about how to sell your SaaS product or your wine, or your agency, or your open house or your book, or whatever it is, you have to understand where the consumer actually is.

The truth is, sales is about people. You have to build relationships first. You have to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and empathize with their position. No app is going to teach you that.

You don’t get to decide whatever 13 to 25 year olds want to do with their hair, their clothes, their bodies, their cell phones, their friends, their time, or their money. You just have to observe and react.

99% of the time your customer is going to be searchable and accessible online. And for those of you that don’t know, consumers now spend 10 hours a day in front of their screen with roughly half of that time spent on a mobile device. Clearly the internet, and our glowing black boxes have our attention

When the energy of your tactics is to convert, you will most likely lose. When your energy is to disproportionately bring value and let the chips fall where they may, you will win. It will change your behavior, it will change the energy of the execution and it will change you game.

Like anything else in life, I think sale comes down to putting in the work, providing value, building relationships and doing the research.

If you want to win, you have to be practical with your understanding and execution. You have to go where the consumer actually is, and use the right tools to reach them.

The reason I have done so well in sales, is because I don’t do things with the expectation of a return. I do things to provide value, no matter what.

If you are intelligent, and you understand that you have no control over THE MARKET, then you begin thinking about where the potential upside is.

Being tied down by the idealistic vision of how you made your money in the past is wrong. The world is changing! And the way you were successful yesterday definitely won’t be the way you are successful today. You need to look forward and become utterly unromantic about what you did in the past that got you “here.”

Technology has changed the way we sell, and most of your actions as salespeople aren’t rooted in that reality. It’s all out there, you just have to go out and take it!

If you want to win in sales, you need to be utterly unromantic about consumer behavior. You need observe, analyze and adjust to where the consumer actually is. No one can deny that social media takes up our time.

A tiny hole can empty a great big bucket.

George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing.

Our objective in regulation should be to put in place tough enough regulation and capital and liquidity standards that we level the playing field and make it costly.

I am said to be difficult of acquaintance, unwilling to meet any one half way, and showing a social manner which is easy, not diffident, but formal and unresponsive, tending constantly to hold people off.

I hate fame. There's this assumption that everyone wants it - that by being a musician, I've signed up for it at some point. But personally, what I signed up for is sharing my music. I've always said I'd rather have four No. 10 songs than one No. 1 hit.

Let the conversation flow at its own pace dont try to rush it or control it. You need to let go and be part of the conversation.

It has always been clear that The Washington Post is a company that is set up for the purpose of protecting the long-term interests of its assets and held together as a holding company.

If you see how a plant grows and you taste it in situ you have a perfect example of how it should taste on the plate.

You can't die with an unfinished book.

Climbing may be hard but its easier than growing up.

A model is an actor without a voice.

When I played 'Annie' in the seventh grade, I knew from then on that I wanted to be an actor.

Oregonians aren't the only ones who recognize the extraordinary service and sacrifice of their state's National Guard.

I would love to be on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' I'd love to be on that. A lot of my favorite shows get canceled really early on. I liked 'Twin Peaks.' If I had a time machine I'd be in that.

If I'm outside, I want something flat on my feet.

I think in England you eat too much sugar and meat and not enough vegetables.

We can transform the government and the economy, as well as democracy, in Malaysia.

Me and Norman Mailer have talked about how hard it is in America to get better. Especially at writing.

Marriage to Fernando offered shelter and security, but the shackle was the price I'd pay.

Writing is so fun precisely because if you take out the right adjective, the readers can decide what kind of book is in their hands. Suspension of disbelief should not be mandatory in contemporary writing.

As I told Piers Morgan, 'Catholics have confession, whereas Northern Irish Protestants only have interviews.'

But a girl of seventeen is not always thinking of books, especially in the Oxford summer term.

I cannot be Mary Hart - or even worse, Samantha Harris - and stand there with my hip out talking about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes taking Suri to an art museum without making fun of it.

Everyone's surprised when they meet me. I guess it's because I've played tough cookies for so long... It's what I do best. I'm not sure I could pull off a genteel Southern belle.