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Just recently, I had the extreme pleasure of working with a leading edge financial services company.

Is their market tough? YES!

Has it pushed them into a corner? NO!

First, let’s see what they’ve got going for them:

• Young, creative, aggressive leadership
• A clear and compelling vision for the future
• A powerful business model
• Edgy products pushing the market boundary
• A commitment to deliver “value-added” knowledge and consultation AND positive, measurable financial impact
• A solid energetic team of field professionals who care about the business and its success
• Those professionals are totally committed to the value of consistent processes across their company and with clients across the nation

In the months since the CEO launched our project, we have been coaching selected of their producing leaders and sales professionals. We have also been adapting our tools to their marketplace and co-developing approaches to leverage the value of the company, the people and the products.

A few of the key things we have focused on:

1. Professionals who are hungry to perform well and achieve lots are an essential part of the recipe for success that:

• Builds on their strengths and individuality
• Builds on the identity and potential of the business
• Promotes them to “be your best”
• Helps them make “value-added” concrete and practical

2. To succeed, you need to give ambitious and motivated professionals a framework. These guys and gals want a consistent process because they know that puts the company tone and identity front and center.

3. It’s not either~or: being “strategic” and “value-added” is not enough - they also need to be “transactional” and “gets deals done”.

4. Confirming and demonstrating that tools and processes do not have to be “ceilings for compliance” - that they should be firm to act as foundations for innovation and for enhancing the clients’ appreciation of individual and company strengths and style.

5. The power of repeatable patterns of dialogue and coverage will drive more meaningful conversations about client business priorities, heighten client expectations of us and create unassailable defenses against more transactional competitors.

It was one of the most gratifying and exciting workshops I have facilitated in years. I’m excited to observe how they make it their own and drive new results through the next few phases of coaching and integrating.

Now watch ‘em go!

When Walmsley & Co. meets with potential clients, whether they be selling professionals with responsibilities in a business or firm or independents with their businesses at a certain level of growth, we identify them as “Producing Leaders”.

What is a Producing Leader? Most people get “producer”- someone who produces great results. Most people get “leader” and think of it conventionally as a formal leader.

If I transported you to a floor of a services business or to get an helicopter view of professionals leading with their clients, engaging and influencing peers, service and delivery professionals… you would immediately recognize the “producing leaders” when you saw them in action.

They have drive… they have enough information to move the ball forward… they are fun and easy to work with … they make their clients and their colleagues successful… people want to be around them and they know that they will be more successful as a result!

So What’s a Producing Leader?

A Producing Leader is the high-performing selling professional who holds the responsibility for bringing in business results through sales and client relationships. They may be the head of an entrepreneurial company, a professional like a financial advisor or an specialist consultant, or someone who is the company “rainmaker” even if he or she also does the company business… i.e. a lawyer who also lands the clients, or a the head of a recruiting company who also does the placements, an executive who demonstrates the strategy every day rather than just talking about it.

You can tell the Producing Leader because he or she has some distinct responsibilities and drivers:

• Leads through results
• Leads the growth of the business
• Is Client focused
• “Makes it happen”
• Service, fulfillment and delivery professionals want to work with them and feel more successful when they do
• A producing leader’s team is explicitly focused on supporting the Producing Leader in creating results.

The Producing Leader holds the key expertise that is the trusted center of the business.

Producing Leaders have highly effective ways to connect with the lifeblood of the business - that being client relationships - while still reaching out to new ones, knowing each client is receiving the kind of care and attention needed to feel they have made a good choice.

They have a simple, effective process in place to be sure everyone is being “touched” regularly, and also “heart”… meaning that those “touches are meaningful exchanges” with clients, future clients and colleagues. The heart is where profit, pride and purpose connect; where the Producing Leader and staff are engaged and motivated.

They are positive AND progressive. People get engaged on passion and stay engaged on urgent, vital execution.

Are you a Producing Leader?

If so, ask yourself: is your business “heart” connected and engaged or are you too often going through the motions just to keep up with day-to-day business?

In future posts we’ll talk more about how to keep in the “heart” without losing effectiveness.

We are really excited about our upcoming presentations for the Financial Planning Associations Business Solutions Conference. If you are planning on attending the conference and have found our website and blog as part of your pre-conference research, welcome!

Posts related to material being presented at the conference will be tagged FPA, so you can get a taste of what each of our sessions have to offer (look for the link to the right of the blog). We will be presenting a number of sessions on the first day. Our goal is to have you leave with a tool-kit you can implement easily and immediately to increase and amplify your business.  If you implement we know you will IMMEDIATELY get feedback and engagement from your clients and future clients.

Walmsley & Co. sessions include:

“Strengthening the Bridge to Financial Plan” with me, which will show you how to very simply increase your long-term client engagement through a great tool called the Summary Letter. Your clients will want to meet with you again and again!

“Great First Impressions” with our colleague Elizabeth Jetton (who many of you know!) will show you ways to use an Agenda-building tool to both create a great first impression and maintain a long-term engaged client relationship.

“Engaging Clients with Your Storyline”  with my partner Sherri Day. Sherri will show you how to shift from “sales-y”, pushy elevator pitches to meaningful stories that build confidence and a collaborative path with your clients.

To find out more:

http://www.fpanet.org/EventsConferences/Conferences/BusinessSolutions/ProgramSchedule/Sessions/FullSchedule/

If you have any questions or comments before the conference, please contact with me with them. I’d love to hear from you.

Just for fun, I tried the phrase “sales process” in Wikipedia. I’m a big fan of Wikipedia (as you may have noticed) but while this entry was tightly and distinctly written, it felt so constricting. It’s no wonder that sales professionals and producing leaders have a love/hate relationship with the words - and implementation of - “sales process”.

If I’ve learned anything about professionals, it’s that people don’t like to feel constricted, trapped or mapped. They don’t like to feel that they must trod the exact steps of the guy or gal beside them to do the same numbers and to create the same relationships. In all of the “process” there has to be room for the “real” person to emerge or else that “real” person will eventually either come to deeply resent the process and leave sales, or clients won’t buy in because it doesn’t feel “real”.

Process isn’t the enemy. Only bad process.

Tiger is a great example of unique top performers with consistent process (see my previous posts).  All great athletes respect process- it’s their playbook!   Without it they would not have a baseline on which to innovate or a shared platform of words and behaviors with their team mates.

Have you ever watched the show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” (http://www2.warnerbros.com/web/whoseline/index.jsp). Those guys are brilliant. The audience experiences their work as spontaneous, unique-to-the-moment and full of personality engaging with the audience. Which it is.  Looks like there is no structure.

But don’t be fooled.

Great improvising also has a process, a set of rules that doesn’t restrict but allows players to roll action forward in fluid, split second reaction and timing. In his book Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell studies some of the process, discipline and practice of great improve troops and reveals that consistently great improvisational comedy stands on a firm foundation. There are rules that great improv artists practice interactively. Playing by these rules is what makes them great over and above pure talent.

Process is how to power yourself from good to great, from medium performer to top performer. Top performers have a process. But just like improv comics or Tiger Woods, you just don’t get that sense when you observe them or interact with them, because the process melds seamlessly with their “real” self.

Evaluate your process. Does it let you breath? Does it allow for your unique personality style? Does it enhance and support your strengths? Does it let you be more confident and certain in your strides without forcing you to take the already-trodden path?

Make it real. Make it yours. That’s one of the secrets to making it work.

Next post…the clients’ POV. How they experience process from their providers.

I recently wrote a post on Always Be Opening, one of the core principles of “Stop Selling and Do Something Valuable”. Now more than ever is the time to be opening possibilities with clients, potential clients and your network. Here are some other ways to find and keep an ABO mindset:

1.       Engage clients and future clients with possibilities - that’s what gets people motivated.  Help them believe.  Help them execute on them.

2.       Focus on positive news and results to keep your own energy high and motivated. Even with the “crash” and the willingness for everyone else to jump on the “poor us” bandwagon, are you noticing the positive news and economic stories around you?  They’re there. Polish your lenses.

3.       Push your energy ahead of you … be positive and progressive … it’s infectious.

4.       Appreciate and honor your clients’ strengths.  Build on them.

5.       Be grateful and keep it building the virtuous cycle.