Order the Book that Will Make You Proud of Your Profession
This book is about the EXTRAORDINARY THINGS sellers do when they stop pushing people to buy before they’re ready, and they start guiding buyers by transforming:
- VALUES INTO ACTIONS
- VISIONS INTO REALITIES
- OBSTACLES INTO INNOVATIONS
- SEPARATENESS INTO SOLIDARITY
- RISKS INTO REWARDS
Mainly, this is a book about YOU. It’s about what your buyers want YOU to do and how you can excel by stepping into your full potential as a leader.
READ STOP SELLING & START LEADING TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE EXTRAORDINARY SALES HAPPEN:
The experts that brought you The Leadership Challenge® and DISCOVER Questions® Get You Connected have teamed up to create the behavioral blueprint for sellers based on buyer preferences.
This book shows modern sellers how to be more effective by showing up as leaders.
- Find out the surprising results from the research study with B2B buyers.
- Learn The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® and how these behaviors can increase sales.
- Step into your full leadership potential.
- Make simple behavioral shifts that will change how buyers respond to you.
- Feel good about the work you do in sales.
FIND OUT WHAT YOUR BUYERS WANT YOU TO DO DIFFERENTLY!
Read the Reviews
If you're feeling discouraged about sales, STOP SELLING AND START LEADING will inspire you with a fresh perspective. Instead of reinforcing typical selling behaviors, this terrific book focuses on leadership qualities and a values-based approach that will delight your customers and enliven your sense of purpose.
Required transformations in selling start with major shifts in buying. We are in such an era. Today’s buyers are empowered with immediate information, access, and a megaphone to report good (and bad) selling behavior. Modern selling must center around transparency, integrity, and true customer focus. Stop Selling & Start Leading presents a proven approach toward this new age of selling.
Nothing happens until someone asserts leadership. The 3 authors of this book, whom I admire, accurately show you how a change in energy from ‘selling’ to ‘leading’ can eliminate the common problems encountered from traditional sales practices. This could also be called “How to succeed through others” and the guidance would be the same. What makes this work substantial to me is that it is also a great formula for being a good person and living an abundant life. Learn to lead and sell while feeling great about what you’re doing.
I have been studying and teaching consultative sales and leadership for more than 20 years, and this book does a masterful job of weaving the two topics together in both an instructive and impactful way. I've read a lot of sales books, at least 200 or more, and this will now be one of the top ones I recommend to all of my clients.
Top sellers turn failures into opportunities, obstacles into challenges, and possibilities into realities. Stop Selling & Start Leading is filled with fresh research and strategies to help sellers transform this success mindset into daily behaviors—and ultimately, close more deals.
My favorite line in this book is super simple: ‘The seller becomes a trusted advisor.’ The principles and steps required to achieve that level of buyer confidence are outlined in Start Selling & Start Leading. Read it to make extraordinary sales happen.
“Separately, I’ve admired Deb Calvert’s outstanding sales book and blog and the legendary leadership writings of Kouzes and Posner. Together, they have found a “chocolate meets peanut butter” combination that is so needed for the sales profession in our current buyer’s market and VUCA business environment. As an ardent advocate of buyer-centric, consultative sales methodologies and believer in the application of leadership principles to selling, I’m excited that they have – through research – validated an approach that has the potential to elevate the sales profession. Stop Selling & Start Leading is truly a roadmap for evolving seller behavior to radically transform your organization’s sales results.”
This book clearly outlines an authentic, natural and proven way to hit your number, delight your buyers and create long-term mutually-successful business relationships. It’s a blueprint for how to sell, lead and succeed in today’s world.
I’m a long-time fan of Kouzes and Posner's leadership expertise and Calvert’s perspective on what it takes to succeed in sales. What a thrill to see them apply these proven leadership principles to professional selling! Stop Selling and Start Leading offers a powerful perspective on why sellers who lead well will thrive and then provides clear, practical guidance on how to gain credibility and respect that will move buyers to act. Read. This. Now. to set yourself apart from the typical, ineffective salesperson who gets perceived as nothing more than a vendor/supplier.
Every leader, sales leader and individual that wants a successful career in selling should read this book. What you'll discover is the liberating truth, backed by brand-new research that proves leading is the new selling. Stop Selling, Start Leading not only reveals new science behind how customers want to be sold, it tells you exactly how to do it by offering practical advice on how to be most effective. It contains insights that ascend sales process, and it supersedes old-school selling behaviors. For those who truly want the highest levels of success for themselves and their clients, I offer my highest recommendation.
Stop Selling & Start Leading is not the normal sales book, which is what makes it so powerful. Too many sales people think sales is about techniques. High performance selling has little to do with technique, it's all about leadership. It's helping customers solve their problems, align the buying group, and helping them mobilize to take action. Great sellers are great leaders--with their customers and within their own organizations. Stop Selling & Start Leading is a thoughtful discussion about how sales people provide this leadership. It focuses on the five practices critical for leadership, providing great case studies and lessons in each practice. Make these practices the core of your approach in providing great sales leadership.
If your customers don’t see you as a leader, then they don’t need you. The game of selling has changed and the customer is rewriting the rulebook. Be seen as a leader or don’t be seen at all!
The most effective sales leaders recognize that smarmy, high-pressure sales tactics are a losing proposition. Backed by detailed research, Stop Selling & Start Leading shows the right way to win business: cultivating long-term client relationships built on authority, mutual respect, and trust. This essential playbook will transform your approach to sales.
Stop Selling & Start Leading is critical reading for those who want to sell effectively in the future and a book that was desperately needed. If you aspire to be a peer and a trusted advisor, there is simply no better blueprint available to you. Read this with a great sense of urgency.
An innovative and desperately needed new approach to how to sell in today’s marketplace. A must-read for any sales professional who really values the power of the customer relationship; Stop Selling & Start Leading is the book successful sales people can’t live without!
If you are in sales and not happy with your results or simply trying to achieve more, what behaviors are you willing to change? Stop Selling and Start Leading is a great read on how sales execs can make simple tweaks in their behaviors which will generate significant results. But it all starts with you taking the first step and reading this book, which I highly recommend.
The veil has been lifted to reveal the core issue between buyers and sellers today. We’ve all felt the effects of the disconnect but we now have a clear description of the problem and a clear solution. Sellers must stop selling and start leading if they want to build collaborative relationships. Stop Selling & Start Leading points the way to reconnect buyers and sellers. In my world of extremely large, complex sales, this is not simply a recommended reading but an imperative to change sales behaviors.
Leaders don’t need official titles like sales manager, director or vp of sales. Leadership comes from within and should be embraced by all sales reps interested in success.
The world of selling has changed rapidly. What you thought you knew about successful selling has been flipped upside down. More emails and phone calls isn’t the answer to why buyers ignore salespeople. As you’ll learn from the buyer research presented in this book, buyers have no interest in working with sellers who continue to pitch product features and insist on doing demos. Faced with increasing challenges to help their organizations remain relevant, competitive and innovative, they want to work with sellers who can lead them to the right solution to their biggest problems. In Stop Selling and Start Leading authors, Calvert, Kouzes and Posner combine the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership with recent buyer research to show you exactly how to make extraordinary sales happen.
I love this book because I, too believe the concept to be true. Personal Leadership matters and it matters more than ever in sales environments today. I also respect the fact that it includes research from over 500 B2B buyers and hundreds of sellers as to what they believe constitutes good solid sales behavior, and the authors have come up with a very tight model of behavioral excellence. I strongly urge any sales professional, sales leader or business owner to soak in the pages of this brilliant piece of literary work and it will change your thinking.
The authors start with a chapter on credibility, which in their view creates the foundation for leadership and selling. That’s why, to use an axiom, their book simply “rings true.” You won’t find an ounce of counterfeit data or advice. Exemplary research illustrated by wise practitioner stories makes for great reading and solid guidance. An instant classic for every B2B seller.
In Stop Selling & Start Leading, the authors have delivered a beautiful masterpiece that is guaranteed to make you an more effective and respected sales professional.
When sellers stop selling, buyers start buying. The top 5% of frontline sales professionals discovered this a long time ago and it really is time the other 95% of the sales population woke up and recognized that caffeine aroma. Buyers have changed the way they buy forever and sellers must adapt. This most excellent book, based on solid research, provides modern salesmen and women with a route map that will lead them to that hallowed place, frequented only by top 5% achievers.
Stop Selling & Start Leading reminds sellers that you can build an amazing career as a professional seller utilizing what the authors describe as the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®. The book is filled with stories that showcase exactly how to be a leader at a time when companies are looking to determine if bots can replace their SDR teams. Now is the time for sellers to really study and master leadership. Buyers want and need this.
The research supporting the Five Practices of Exemplary Leaders® is powerful. Buyers have spoken…they want sellers to stop using old-school sales tactics which make them feel unimportant. The authors clearly outline the behaviors buyers not only want, but so desperately need. Sellers who and create value with every conversation will win.
The concept of applying proven leadership behaviors to sales is brilliant. This book couldn't have been more timely!
Stop Selling & Start Leading shows sellers precisely how to differentiate themselves from the pack and turn customers into clients for life. If you’re looking for a way to break out of the traditional sales mode and become a valued member of your clients’ team, this book gives you the five steps to do exactly that.
This book will impact you personally. If you are motivated and prepared to face some possibly uncomfortable truths about yourself - not just a sales professional, but as a human being- it could be the beginning of a turning point. Hundreds of ‘sales’ books and experts are out there telling sellers what they are doing wrong. This book is different not only because it gives a microphone to the buyer, but also give sellers actionable steps to take at the end of each chapter to become the salesperson that leads buyers to solve problems. And it does so by telling the stories of sellers who are examples of the mindsets and corresponding behaviors that today’s sales professional must learn to model. That is why this book will have a personal impact on you. If you are motivated and brave, it will be a positive one.
Stop Selling & Start Leading is a once in a generation book that is right place, right time, with EXACTLY the right message - it succinctly encapsulates what buyers now demand from sales people. As the authors have outlined so brilliantly, buyers crave strong leadership and the exemplary sellers of the future will be those that can learn how to embrace the principles outlined in this exceptional book. Forget SPIN Selling, Solution Selling, and Challenger Selling, and just learn the art of leadership!
500 Buyers can't be wrong, and they have spoken! Buyers are fed up with sales-y behavior. And unfortunately, according to the research, you are a sales-y salesperson (or what I call a carnival barker), it frustrates buyers. What's worse, most sales people don't even know they're doing exactly the opposite of what buyers want. There is a real difference in how sales people sell and how buyers want to be sold. Stop Selling & Start Leading brilliantly highlights this difference and will deliver you from the darkness. Stop Selling & Start Leading is a book long overdue. This is exactly what the sales world needs, a guide that turns the tired sales-y stereotype of sales people into credible sales leaders. It's time the sales world abandons its archaic selling behaviors (the carnival barker) and let Stop Selling & Start Leading elevate the sales game. It's needed.
The chasm between how buyers want to buy and how salespeople sell is a mile wide and seemingly impossible to cross. Until now. This book sheds much-needed light on how to ditch ineffective old-school selling tactics and adopt the leadership behaviors that buyers crave from today’s sellers. Based on eye-popping buyer research and a proven leadership model, the authors present a clear roadmap for navigating the B2B sales process with integrity, credibility, and dignity for a true win-win experience.
The concept of Leadership in sales is absolutely foundational. The principles taught in this book are what enable every other sales methodology on the market! Want to be a challenger? You can’t without first being a leader. Talk about outcomes? Ask better questions? It all hinges on the seller being viewed as a leader. Every single B2B buyer is looking for a better experience – one where the salesperson leads them through the buying process. I can’t believe it took this long for a book of this nature to hit the presses. Thank you Jim, Barry, and Deb for giving us the new sales bible for every seller in every industry at every stage.
Breaking News!!! Customers no longer wonder about the “how” and “what” of scratching whatever purchase itch they have. Long before prospects determine whether you’re competitive or not, they rule you in or out based on “why” they should do business with you. Are you relevant to them? And today, the most important “why” factor is whether they see/experience leadership. Leadership is relevance on steroids. So here’s the good news, in the form of a new book that’s devoted – cover-to-cover – to helping you scratch the relevance itch of your prospects and customers have. In Stop Selling & Start Leading, co-authors Calvert, Posner and Kouzes take you by the hand and lead you down the path to the level of leadership that make people want to buy from you. And then come back and do it again. Unless you have all the business you need, you need this book. You’ll thank me later.
These authors clearly appreciate that a modern sales rep’s role is not actually to sell, it is in fact to help buyers to buy. Today’s buyers want to be guided to a significantly better place, by an authentic human being, whom they trust, admire, believe in, and connect with - put simply they want to follow a Leader. Stop Selling & Start Leading will shift your perspectives to help unlock your inner leader regardless of where you are on your sales career to build more meaningful, rewarding and fulfilling relationships with your customers. I encourage you to read and lead!
In todays' world so much about sales focuses on processes, CRM's, systems when in reality the most important thing in sales is PEOPLE - always has been and always will. In professional selling PEOPLE buy from PEOPLE. Stop Selling & Start Leading's research with both buyers and sellers provides a treasure trove of information to help salespeople lead and sell more effectively and buyers to once again enjoy the experience -while their companies benefit with improved behaviors and better bottom line results on both sides.
The widespread use of social media over the years has greatly impacted both sellers and buyers. We must shift away from formal, transactional sales to more authentic, people-to-people experiences that connect from the heart. The authors of Stop Selling & Start Leading provide a wonderful, step-by-step path to empower today's entrepreneurs, business owners and sales teams to truly understand what works. Reading this book and applying the principles will improve your bottom line, I know it!
Stop Selling & Start Leading takes a closer look at a new and innovative formula for any sales team in any industry. Future sales success is driven through leadership, relationship building, and compassion towards other people. The sales techniques of yesterday need to be recalculated to the basic life lessons that our parents taught us in our youth. Transparency and love are acceptable in the work place!
Having always admired, and learned from, Kouzes and Posner's now-classic leadership practices, it's great to see them reapplied towards the ever-growing gap between modern day empowered buyers and traditional selling practices. Stop Selling & Start Leading is based on direct research and highlights real targeted outcomes that sellers can attain if they evolve from pure energy-based, persistent selling to focusing on leadership of the customer experience, creating common values, and leading by example through them.
Book Deb – Sales & Leadership Speaker
Dynamic, Engaging & Highly Interactive
Deb has been named one of the 64 most influential women in business and a top sales influencer. Invite Deb to open your kickoff sales rally, association event or sales conference with the Stop Selling & Start Leading® presentation.
- How Sales Contributes to the Customer Experience in B2B
- The All-New Needs Assessment is Dialogic vs. Diagnostic
- How to Inspire Your Buyer
- Stop Selling & Start Leading®: An Overview
- Buyers Have Changed. Have You?
Excerpts
There’s a significant relationship between the extent that sellers report that they experiment and take risks, even when there is a chance of failure, and their productivity. Those who most frequently engage in this leadership behavior report a productivity rate that is three to four times that reported by sellers at the other end of the continuum.
Those sellers who feel most proud of what they do and most effective in their jobs are those who report most frequently setting a personal example of what they expect of others.
The sellers who rated themselves the most productive indicated that they treat people with dignity and respect nearly three times more often than those who were at the bottom of the productivity scale.
Ninety percent of sellers who report that they very frequently find ways to celebrate accomplishments indicate a strong degree of team spirit versus only thirty percent of those who rarely celebrate.
The most productive sellers indicate that they are nearly always communicating with genuine conviction, and with the big picture in mind.
About the Authors
James Kouzes
James Kouzes is the Dean’s Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, and he lectures on leadership around the world to corporations, governments, and non-profits. The Wall Street Journal cited him as one of the twelve best executive educators in the United States.
He has been awarded numerous distinctions, including the Thought Leadership Award from the Instructional Systems Association and being named one the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior by Trust Across America.
Kouzes and Posner are the authors of The Leadership Challenge, Learning Leadership, Credibility, The Truth about Leadership, A Leader’s Legacy, Encouraging the Heart, among many other works. They also developed the highly acclaimed Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI)®.
Barry Posner
Barry Posner is the Accolti Professor of Leadership and former Dean of the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. An accomplished scholar, he also provides leadership workshops and seminars worldwide. He works with public and private sector organizations, consulting at a strategic level.
An internationally renowned scholar and educator, he has authored more than 100 research and practitoner-focused articles and received the Outstanding Scholar Award for Career Achievement from the Journal of Management Inquiry.
Deb Calvert
Deb Calvert is the President of People First Productivity Solutions, a boutique training and consulting firm that builds organizational strength by putting people first.
Her first book, DISCOVER Questions® Get You Connected, was named one of the “Top 20 Most Highly-Rated Sales Books of All Time” by HubSpot. She was recently named one of the “65 Most Influential Women in Business” by Tenfold, and she consistently appears on lists naming the top global Sales Influencers.
Deb founded The Sales Experts Channel, a brain trust of leading sales authors, speakers and trainers, and she is the UC-Berkeley Instructor for the popular Sales Development Principles course. Deb is also a Certified Master of The Leadership Challenge® and Certified Coach, Sales & Leadership Speaker, and Trainer.
An internationally renowned scholar and educator, he has authored more than 100 research and practitoner-focused articles and received the Outstanding Scholar Award for Career Achievement from the Journal of Management Inquiry.
Heard Around the Web
The Stop Selling & Start Leading® Movement is gaining steam! Are you ready to transition from stereotypical sales behaviors that buyers resist and adopt leadership behaviors that increase sales??
Tune in to interviews where Deb explains various aspects of the buyer research and sales tactics you can implement immediately.