"Leading Works Better Than Selling."

 "A" players aren't the ones losing their sales jobs in this economy, but their growth is still difficult to come by. So the temptation of "B" players and "A" players is to close whatever is possible now to either keep the job or return to growth. But our research group reached out to over 10,000 business contacts world-wide (the people you and I do business with) and studied how to effectively engage them. We also reached out to 4,000 sales professionals, looking for top "growth leaders" (people who outperformed their counterparts and trends) to find out how they did it. We found that a complete focus on our own sale is not only a short-sighted intention; it actually hurts territory growth.

The team and I looked closely at the top 300 growth leaders' work to create our sales workshop. I'll highlight key concepts over the next several weeks on this sight that we learned in our work about how to maximize sales. The growth leaders we studied led an average of 31% annual sales increase, compared to just 4.6% for the status quo. What we didn't see among growth leaders was a bunch of haphazard tricks. Instead, we saw a seemingly shared high-level direction or strategy.

The Sales Leadership Roundtable in its study The Anatomy of a World-Class Sales Organization put dozens of potential growth initiatives in front of sales leaders of some of the most successful sales forces in the world. Of all that these sales leaders could chose to do first, they chose creating a sales strategy and communicating it comprehensively throughout the entire sales force as their most urgent initiative-number one. So, why communicate a share strategy so comprehensively? These leaders said, "[so] salespeople learn their part in execution."

A compelling strategy is like a magnet brought next to steel shavings; it creates alignment. It helps top salespeople lead their informal deal teams, but a strategy also offers a common language that top performers, almost inadvertently, use to describe "the way to work" to win a deal. Strategy gets people to move in the right direction, find their place and come together to create a new pattern for prospects and clients that's visible.

A great strategy has a mission that resonates, values that are really believed, and objectives driving toward a corporate vision. But interestingly, top salespeople had similar missions, values, and objectives, regardless of their company.

Let's start with the mission that was a key part of growth leaders' strategy. Top performers all seemed to say: "We lead clients' growth to gain our growth." This mission was so clear and is so sustainable, that it's where we got our title: Leading Client Growth. This isn't just business speak. Let's talk about each word:

"Leading"

You see, every growth leader in our research understood that "Leading works better than selling." It was a sort of mantra they seemed to share. Howard Stevens of the HR Chally Group has studied successful salespeople for nearly three decades. He confirmed with me what our team found.

Stevens said, "When a prospect needs to make a change, he is essentially looking to outsource a leadership position for the initiative. So salespeople are like outsourced managers for their prospects and clients. They should think like leaders or they will never get the business."

Leading and selling have entirely different purposes-different missions. Mission matters because prospects and clients can tell what this purpose is through our body language, tone, and facial expressions no matter what words we use.

Listen to what Kip Hollister, CEO of Hollister Inc. said and decide whether she was speaking about leading or selling your contacts.

She said: "It is not about the transaction but rather doing the right thing for the client ..., and then the sales will follow."

And her sales did. Hollister, Inc. won one of the most coveted revenue-related awards in business, the Stevie Award.

I've worked in the midst of some of the most aggressive sales cultures in the world. Selling hard and with self-interest is seen as a positive even popular personality trait. But I'm not recommending becoming a card-carrying member of the status quo-quite the opposite. We're trying to perform at the top of the culture of sales.

So there are a few reasons why leading works better than selling.

For one thing, centuries of reckless sellers have given our prospects a fight or flight reaction to selling. You see; our voice, tone, and body language communicate our mission no matter what we say. You know how your heart rate spikes and your fists clench when a telemarketer calls you? And you're a salesperson! Prospects that fight us or take flight from us don't buy and won't help us reach our quota. Leading works better than selling.

Also, the time and money of the people who fund large, potential agreements are more precious and scarce than ever. These minds scan to protect themselves from sellers who want every dime and minute possible, only to leave them in a lurch later. But, leading is sensed as a less dangerous mission if our mission is to grow the client's business first, then, ours. Prospects open up.

We all know, today's complex sales also require more than a single meeting. They take longer, involve a lot of people, and are discussed behind closed doors when we're not around. We need inside champions that know we place priority on their success and will sell for us internally and do it often.

Finally, reps that sell every chance they get miss hearing urgencies they could solve because they keep talking about their product. The reason trying to grow clients' business first works so well is that it simply gives you the opportunity to discover more needs.

Think about it. Our prospects, if it were possible, want nothing more than to have someone show up that could actually help them achieve what business requires of them. They just don't believe it could ever be a salesperson! This is why leading works better than selling and why your true mission matters.

Okay, now on to the term "Client," the second word in our title, Leading Client Growth. How our organization uses the terms prospect, customer, and client should matter. Use the term "Client" for an account that buys from all product lines. "Customers" buy some offerings. Obviously, "Prospects" don't use any of our offerings, yet, but are qualified. Labeling this way will create focus on progressing those accounts that are the most strategic this year.

We found that especially when economic times are either difficult or booming, it is critical to refocus on particular accounts across all three categories. Strategic accounts are the Clients, Customers, and Prospects that we think we can help most going forward. Focusing on those accounts will deliver the most growth.

One of the other key findings in the Corporate Executive Board's research echoed ours. Sales executives said that after saturating the field with a common strategy, creating a "Strategic Accounts" program was the next priority after hiring and managing talent, which we'll discuss later. You see, ironically, salespeople who just sell to as many prospects as possible wind up becoming B players.

How? Well, the Pareto Law, which was originally a real estate principle, became popular as the 80/20 rule. This principle is alive and well in Sales and critical to your territories' success: Roughly, the top 20 percent of your accounts equals (from 50 percent up to) 80 percent of your revenue potential next year. I call these 20 percent your "strategic accounts," regardless of whether they are a prospect, customer, or client because these represent your business and your growth next year. If the best sales forces think it's smart to have a strategic accounts program, it's a good bet that we should have one in our own territory. Why? Well, the inverse of the Pareto Law is also true and pretty scary. If up to 80 percent of the accounts in your territory equal only 20 percent of next year's revenue, then, you may be spending 80 percent of your time on only 20 percent of next year's commissions. We can do better than that.

Refocusing efforts on these strategic accounts frees up a lot of time for even more results. This isn't an excuse for elephant hunting-only chasing a single, huge prospect all year. But focusing efforts on all types of 80/20 strategic accounts can be huge. The goal becomes turning all three types of accounts into growing clients by leading. We find the accounts with the most potential for mutual benefit-the ones we can win-and start leading to client growth.

So let's discuss the third element of our mission: "Growth."

Our prospects and we all want the same thing: to grow some number, whatever that number is-a top line, a bottom line, some business metric, maybe our careers and pay. Sometimes, unfortunately, it's our ego. But we all want to push some needle higher and not just this month. Our strategic accounts have initiatives to grow some key metric. In fact, our prospects often have initiatives and deadlines far more pressured than even our punishing quota. We just have to find what that growth is that business is requiring of our strategic accounts. If we help them grow their number, we will grow our number.

Sam Balsara, Chairman and Managing Director of Madison Communications stated their strategy this way: "If our clients grow we will grow. That really is the essence of our strategy."

This brings us to a key point. Remember: our mission matters. To beat our goals now and next year, we must first figure out how to solve prospects and clients' goals, then ours. Mission matters. In fact, our mantra must become: leading works better than selling. This has to be our mindset on every call to gain other's trust. Our mission can either be a dangerous problem or a powerful tool; it's up to us. In fact, based on our findings, we should run, not walk to adopt the informal title of "growth leader," a sort of "executive of client growth" even with your clients and mean it. We'll sell more, gain coveted references, drive total selling costs down, and client profits up. We'll grow other people's careers, our careers, capabilities, cash flow, assets on both sides of the table. And, of course, our revenue will go up. Leading really does work better than selling. So let's adopt the mission of leading client growth.