#18 Deb Calvert – Buyers Want Sellers to Show-up As Leaders

Deb Calvert is the author of DISCOVER Questions® and Stop Selling & Start Leading. She is founder of The Sales Experts Channel, President of People First Productivity Solutions, and a certified sales and executive coach. Deb has been named one of the “65 Most Influential Women in Business” and a Top 30 Global Sales Guru.

The Sales Experts Channel, mission is to bring together thought leaders in sales that is available on-demand over 500 webinars and videos and every week new content goes out.

Stop Selling and Start Leading: How to Make Extraordinary Sales Happen, was named the #3 top sales book of 2018, based on our research with buyers, Deb wrote the book with renowned Leadership experts, James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner. The Leadership Challenge is the gold-standard manual for effective leadership and The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership(R).

Deb researched 530 B2B buyers with the premises what happens if sellers were to act more like leaders. The authors asked sellers, “Tell us a story at when you were at your personal best as a seller” and then looked at how many of the behaviours were leaderships behaviours. Stop Selling and Start Leading is a blueprint for making extraordinary sales as they know what buyers like and know what great sellers do.

What was most surprising, inspire a shared vision, thought to be a key sales behaviour was least important for the buyer.

Discover Question Get You Connected, Debs first book was also based on research. She said, for buyers’ great questions suggest the seller is truly interested in helping them. Great questions turn on the buyers’ euphoria and open the possibilities for having a different kind of conversation that is engaging and bonding and become a game-changing competitive advantage. She cautions that seller must be in the moment and listen well to the answers, asking the follow-up questions.

Deb got into sales by accident, when Deb was very young, she would sell candy for a youth organisation, her Mother taught her to ask questions they would laugh the strategic questions from a 7-year-old. People would laugh at the cheeky question and she sold a lot of candy. Deb got a journalism degree (ask questions) the first job was selling in a newspaper thinking that she would move over to editorial and she never did.

Deb Mother was one of the first women US marines to go overseas, she recruited other marines before going overseas and they taught her. On diversity Deb recalls her Mother wise words, she would say you have to make room for everyone, you must make room for everyone and not taking away from anyone. The organisations that truly make room for everyone to be heard and valued. There are perceptual barriers, there are still boys’ clubs with barriers in opportunities and language, but it is a rewarding career. The Sales Experts Channel is very diverse with 76 sales experts from global influencers by 2020.

Debs advice is to think of yourself as a leader, because that is how buyers see you, and that’s how buyers want you to behave. Not being too differential but asking challenging questions to stretch them. Anyone can be a leader, the root word is to guide how are you guiding your buyer colleagues, stepping into your full potential and unleashing the full possibilities.

Offer free chapter from my first book, DISCOVER Questions Get You Connected. It includes specific tactics for improving connections with buyers by asking more purposeful and engaging questions.

Listen to the podcast as you will love Debs frog story!

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