Deb Calvert
Kansas City
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Author of DISCOVER Questions for Connections, Clarity & Control. Executive coach, soft skills & supervisory skills trainer, leadership program architect.
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Articles by Deb Calvert
LETTER: Why I'm backing Anders Folk for Hennepin County attorney
To the Editor: As a Minnetonka City Council member, public safety is job one. Our police, schools and residents all rely on an effective Hennepin County Attorney’s office to keep our community safe. The county attorney is the chief prosecutor for over a million people and runs the largest prosecution office in Minnesota. It should be led by someone who has done the work.
Hard Work Pays In Selling
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Planning Ahead for Higher Yields
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Earn Buyer Trust by Staying Available
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The Importance of Learning to Expand Your Capacity
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Flexibility: The Key to Co-Creating Insights and Solutions
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Avoiding the Generic Sales Pitch
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Maximizing: The Formula for Sales Success
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How to Coach Your Buyers
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Sales Results from the Uniqueness of You
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How to Recover from Sales Mistakes
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Creating Sustainability by Managing Your Time in Sales
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Deb Calvert Interview: Stop Selling and Start Leading
We recently interviewed top sales expert, bestselling author and leading sales and executive coach Deb Calvert on several topics of her expertise, including her new book Stop Selling and Start Leading. The interview gives some fascinating insight into sales questions, teamwork, and the amazing power of leadership in sales. 1. The name of your company is People First Productivity Solutions. Tell us why you gave the company that name, and how that philosophy influences your business solutions.
Resourcing Sellers for Selling Provides Support
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Pruning Your Work to Maintain a Sales Focus
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Networking for Sales Effectiveness
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In Selling, Who Should You Challenge?
This is part one in a 5-part series about challenging as a part of selling. We'll talk later in the series about challenging buyers. First, let's talk about the most important person you need to challenge if you are to be successful in sales. (No, it's not your sales manager.) The most important person to challenge in selling is yourself. Start by challenging your assumptions about every single prospect and client you call on.
How to Fertilize Your Sales Territory
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What Straw Bales Can Teach You About Nurting Leads
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CONNECT2SELL for Sales Productivity
These are the questions buyers ask themselves...
Caution! Seller Intent Is What Forms a Buyer's First Impression
Buyers are suspicious and guarded. Sometimes, sellers give them a reason to be. You may not realize that your behaviors are causing buyer reservations or mistrust. Outwardly, you believe, you are professional, cordial and saying all the right things. Inwardly, though, you have an intention toward the buyer that you'd prefer to keep to yourself. Your intention might be something like this: To get a quick close because you really need it to make quota.
What Straw Bale Gardening Can Teach You About Sales Productivity
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How Learning Leadership Improves Sales Results
Here’s what we know: Modern buyers are empowered, demanding, finicky, price-focused, impatient, and less loyal than they used to be. They take extraordinary measures to dodge sellers’ calls and won’t meet with us until they’re ready to buy – and then, it seems, all they want to talk about is price. As a result, our products – no matter their quality — are commoditized. Many sellers cut prices to the quick, even as they are struggling to reach quota.
CONNECT! How the Collaborative Sale Brings You and Your Buyers Together
Broadcast in Business Sat, Aug 16, 2014 04:00PM UTC CONNECT1 h:288229 s:6556657 archived Selling has changed. Buyers have changed. Isn't it time that you changed, too?
Soft Skills for Sales Professionals During a Global Pandemic
Sales professionals, we need to talk. There’s a global pandemic. People are dying. Businesses are hurting. Every single person in the world will be affected in some way – physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, physiologically, relationally, financially, or otherwise. There’s no shortage of social media posts telling you to hustle during this crisis.
Stop the Revolving Door of Sales Hiring
A simple blueprint for handoffs defines roles/responsibilities and strengthens sales hiring partnerships In hiring front-line sellers, organizations may flounder and fail when sales hiring practices are left up to a single department. Sales managers frequently take short cuts. Recruiters and HR business partners often miss the mark because it’s challenging for them to assess selling skills. When selection responsibilities reside with one or the other department, costly mistakes are made.
Soft Skills and Sales Results
These are the questions buyers ask themselves about sellers. These back-of-the-mind questions influence buyers’ decisions to meet with you and buy from you. How do I know I can trust you? What will people think if I buy from you and it’s a bad decision? Will this be more time and hassle than it’s worth? What am I missing here? What’s the hidden agenda? Will I be able to recover if this is a mistake? How important is this compared to other things I need to do?
More Essential Qualities that Define Great Leadership
Leadership is personal. In a previous Words to Lead by post here in the CONNECT2Lead Blog, we discussed the importance of self-actualization for leaders and their legacy. In this post, we’ll take another look at the peak of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In this view, we’re exploring how leaders self-actualize. Most notably, leaders shift away from concerning themselves with how they’re seen by others. They focus, instead, of how they see themselves.
Other-Orientation Is Essential for Mastering the Softer Side of Sales
One of the most unfortunate stereotypes about sellers is that we are self-centered. Buyers wrongly assume that all sellers are only after their money and only care about themselves. That’s why buyers are guarded. To dispel this unfair notion, you have to work harder and prove that you are interested in your buyers’ needs. You have to demonstrate an orientation to others to prove you’re not selfish and concerned only about yourself.
Qualities You Never Knew You Needed
According to Abraham Maslow and extensions from his theory, A musician must make music, An artist must paint, A poet must write, A gardener must plant, A traveler must wander, A leader must lead, And you must be you. Maslow called it self-actualization. It’s an inner satisfaction that comes from pursuing “your bliss” (Joseph Campbell). It’s a state where you’re no longer motivated by what other people think of you.
Storytelling Is One of the Essential Soft Skills to Succeed in Selling
Maybe you’ve heard: Storytelling is the most powerful tool in your selling toolbox. – Natasha Che, Entrepreneur.com Storytelling is a must-have sales skill. – Sean Pinegar, Tenfold Top sellers use the power of story to mesmerize. – Mike Schultz, RAIN Group Stories trigger emotional responses. – Emma Brudner, HubSpot Stories transform beliefs and change minds. – Matt Sharrers, Sales Benchmark Index Stories, not facts, have the most powerful impact on how people feel.
Leadership Skills Are Never Fully Developed
This will, almost certainly, be a provocative statement. Observing leaders in business, I think it’s fair to say that there are three levels of leadership skills development. I’ll classify them this way. Emerging Leader Command & Control Heart & Soul Emerging Leaders come from all age groups and all levels on the org chart. They may not have titular authority, but they don’t need it because willingly choose to follow them as a result of their actions.
Is Writing Still on the Communication Skills List for Sales Success?
Direct from buyers, a list of grievances about sellers’ communication: Spelling errors Casual or overly familiar Run-on sentences with poor punctuation Rambling thoughts that don’t seem connected Too much to wade through instead of getting to the point Emojis and exclamation points are disingenuous Someone should proofread before sending Obviously a cut-and-paste No flow or story Each of these complaints is about an email, proposal or other piece of written communication from a seller.
Future-Proof Your Career with these Qualities of a Good Leader
Once upon a time, leadership was associated with a command-and-control persona. Military leaders with authority, political figures with charisma, larger-than-life sports legends, and high-power CEOs were considered leaders by virtue of their positions, successes, and vast numbers of followers (even when those followers were merely incidental). Our perception of leadership has evolved.
Don't Forget Non-Verbals When Working on Your Sales Communication Skills
Imagine your body has a straight vertical line running from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. We’ll call this your midline. This table contrasts two body positions, one closed in around the midline and the other expansive and opening up from the midline.
What Makes a Good Leader? What Makes a Great Leader?
Good: Satisfactory in quality, quantity, or degree. Great: Unusual or considerable in degree, power, intensity, etc. In this CONNECT2Lead series focusing on Words to Lead by, we’ve explored the traits, characteristics, qualities, attributes, and behaviors of good leaders. Most of the content in this series describes “good” vs. “great” leadership. That’s because, by its very definition, greatness is unusual.
Listening Tops the List of Must-Have Communication Skills for Success in Selling
Listening well improves business results, including sales. Consider these findings: A study of 267 leading U.S. businesses found that upgrading team members’ communication effectiveness is associated with a 30% improvement in the organization’s market value. Fortune 500s lose an estimated $15,000 per employee per year due to miscommunication. This adds up to over $50 million in annual losses. In the average SMB, about 17.5 hours per week are spent on clarifying miscommunications.
Observing the Powerful Traits of Successful Leaders
Each week in the Words to Lead by series from CONNECT2Sell, we’re examining various aspects of leadership. We’ve defined the differences and need to have the right: Behaviors Qualities Characteristics Attributes Traits (the focus of this post) Being an effective leader requires the whole package. Behaviors are listed at the top because that’s what others see. Behaviors, then, are the place to focus first. Your characteristics, attributes and traits will influence the behaviors you choose to display.
How to Master Sales Communication: Verbal Presentations
In last week’s CONNECT2Sell blog post, we got an overview of why communication skills are so crucial to sales success. In fact, out of all the soft skills required for selling, communication skills may be the most important of all. The surprising takeaway is that there are a minimum of 20 specific skills under that broad umbrella of communication.
Mapping the Attributes All Great Leaders Need
In recent CONNECT2Lead posts, in a series called Words to Lead by, we’ve looked at behaviors, qualities, and characteristics of leaders. In a future post, we’ll also look at leadership traits. In this post we’ll focusing on the attributes of great leaders. Just in case the words qualities, characteristics, attributes and traits all seem synonymous, let’s pause to break them down. Qualities is an umbrella term, used to group characteristics, attributes and traits and distinguish them from behaviors.
Communication Skills that Are Crucial to Sales Success
In last week’s CONNECT2Sell blog post, we laid out the case for developing soft skills. We examined how soft skills, in balance with technical/functional hard skills for selling, will improve sales performance. Our high-level overview listed three broad categories of soft skills that sellers need to focus on: critical thinking, communication, and emotional intelligence.
Not-so-Obvious (but Essential!) Leadership Characteristics
When you think about leaders that you willingly choose to follow, certain obvious characteristics come to mind. We all want to follow leaders who are: Competent Honest Inspiring Visionary Supportive Intelligent Strong communicators Confident Committed Courageous In last week’s post, a part of this CONNECT2Lead Series with Words to Lead by, we reviewed research about those obvious and most-desired characteristics of leaders. In this post, we’ll look at five additional characteristics of leaders.
Soft Skills That Can Turn Salespeople into High Performers
Sellers are pulled in multiple directions every minute of their workday.
The Obvious Characteristics of a Good Leader
As one of the world’s 56 Certified Masters of The Leadership Challenge®, I have the privilege to work with thousands of people in workshops about what it means to be a leader. In one workshop, we ask participants to identify the characteristics of admired leaders. These findings have been compiled by researchers and authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner.
Why It's So Hard to Develop Soft Selling Skills
Check each box that applies. How many of these topics are covered in your organization’s sales training program on a regular basis?
Leadership Qualities
In this new CONNECT2Lead series, Words to Lead by, our objective is to dig down to the nitty gritty matter of leadership. We’re defining words to spotlight nuance, and we’re sharing quotes from leadership researchers to expose various facets of what it means to lead. We’re talking about words, phrases and concepts that aren’t routinely discussed because it’s assumed that the meaning is universally understood (spoiler alert: it’s not). Take the word “leadership,” for example.
What Buyers Say About Soft skills for Sales Professionals
In a Qualtics panel study with 530 B2B buyers, we asked what buyers want from sellers. Here’s a sample of what buyer said.
The Definitive Definition of a Good Leader
This blog post is being released on the first Monday of the first month in the new year of a new decade. No better time than that for a fresh look at leadership and, more specifically, at how YOU can lead in all areas of your life. This new CONNECT2Lead series, Words to Lead by, will help you get that fresh perspective. Each week, we’ll offer quotes from leadership thought leaders to describe what it means to lead and how to do it more effectively.
How Focusing on Soft Skills Can Improve Sales
Happy New Year! This blog post is being released on January 1, 2020, the start of a new month, a new year, and a new decade. Seems like a good time to start a new series, too! This one focuses on soft skills in selling. Over the next 3 months, CONNECT2Sell will define soft vs.
The Benefits of Critical Thinking When Engaging with Buyers
This is what you can expect when you work to build your mental might and eradicate lazy thinking. There are 12 benefits that come from building your critical thinking skills: You’ll be more confident in the position you’re advocating. You’ll reach solid, well-founded decisions. You’ll be able to fully and truly solve problems. You’ll open yourself up to new ideas and diverse thoughts that expand your horizons. You’ll be able to objectively evaluate the facts and separate facts from opinions.
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