Sales lessons from my mother that changed how I do business
My mother doesn't want her personal life discussed on social media, so I won't be sharing her stories. What I will share are the values she's passed on to me - because every single one of them has made me better in sales and in business.
Learn to forgive
This is one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn, and I'm still working on it.
When someone has done you wrong, learning to forgive isn't weakness. It's the opposite. Carrying grudges takes up space in your head that should be occupied by better things. It affects your mood, your energy, and the way you show up for the people you're trying to help. All of that feeds directly into your sales results, whether you realise it or not.
The people who stay bitter about a client who left, a deal that went wrong, or a colleague who let them down - they carry it into every conversation that follows. Let it go. Not for them. For you.
Take chances on people
After my divorce, I was broken. Then lockdown arrived and made everything harder. I was approached by a publisher, Bookboon Learning, about working together, and I said no. I'd lost faith in people and I wasn't ready to trust anyone new with anything.
My mum told me to give people a chance. Hear what they have to say first. So I did.
Four years later, How to Sell When Times Are Tough (as of 2026, no longer available) is still generating royalties and bringing in clients. It has outperformed all three of my other books - and my first book, Everybody Works in Sales, was a bestseller. None of that happens if I'd stayed closed off.
The people who are cautious about working with someone new, or not quite ready to commit to a decision, are often just where I was in that moment. A bit bruised, a bit wary. That's worth remembering the next time a prospect goes quiet on you.
Never stop learning
The more you learn, the more you earn. Mum still buys me books for my birthday and Christmas - stoicism, emotional intelligence, mastery. She's been doing it for years and I hope she never stops.
Everything in sales starts inside your head. If that's a mess, your results will reflect it. The mindset work, the reading, the coaching - none of it is soft or optional. It's the foundation everything else is built on. Lessons from my father taught me similar things about persistence and showing up. Between the two of them, I got a decent education before I ever set foot in a sales role.
It's not what you say, it's how people perceive it
Tone matters enormously. Important conversations should happen over the phone, face to face, or at minimum on a video call. Email and text get misread constantly - in families and in business. The words might be right but the warmth doesn't travel, and warmth is often what closes the gap between a yes and a maybe.
If you're dealing with a sensitive situation with a client or prospect, pick up the phone. Don't hide behind a message.
Go old school in a digital age
My mum still writes letters to childhood friends. Long, thoughtful letters with real feelings in them. In a world where most communication is a WhatsApp message or a LinkedIn DM dashed off in thirty seconds, a proper letter is something people remember.
That's where I got the habit of sending handwritten thank you cards to every new person who works with me, and birthday cards and thank you hampers to clients I've built a real relationship with. I wrote about running a full old school direct mail campaign and the results it produced - it's worth a read if you want to see what that looks like in practice.
People appreciate effort. In sales today, not enough people make any.
If you want to work on the mindset, habits and skills that actually move your sales forward, the Success Generator Programme is where we do that one to one. Or if group training is more relevant for your team, sales training covers the same ground in a different format. Get in touch to talk about what you need.
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