The moment I realized most companies don’t actually have a client acquisition system.

This article is written for leaders of distributed organizations: franchise networks, associations, federations, multi-location businesses, and small to mid-sized enterprises responsible for growth. These organizations rely on predictable client acquisition to sustain their business model, yet most leaders misunderstand the real challenge. They believe the issue is people, motivation, or execution. In reality, the problem is both simpler and deeper. Most companies do not have a client acquisition system. They have activity. They have effort. They have tools. But they do not have a unified commercial growth system that consistently transforms attention into opportunity and opportunity into revenue.

I first understood this in an unexpected place. I was attending a British Energy Saving Technology (BEST) partners event. My company was a BEST partner, representing their energy management solutions. As part of the event, the group attended the 2021 British Grand Prix, the final year Lewis Hamilton won his home race. Until that day, I had never viewed Formula 1 through the lens of systems, flow, or commercial operations. But standing in the middle of that environment changed the way I saw business.

I watched how the teams prepared, executed, and recovered. I saw the choreography of hundreds of specialists working in precise alignment. Every movement had purpose. Every process was engineered. Every output was measurable. It was a visible demonstration of what happens when a system is designed intentionally. There was no reliance on improvisation. There was no dependency on individual heroics. Everything was optimized for flow.

Then I compared it to how most businesses operate. In companies, marketing is scattered. Messaging is inconsistent. Tools are misaligned. Sales processes vary by person. Leadership decisions rely on hope rather than measurement. The organization depends on individuals to compensate for systemic gaps. Standing at Silverstone, the contrast was unmistakable. Formula 1 teams win because their systems work. Businesses struggle because theirs do not.

McKinsey’s research validates this. Their studies show that most organizations operate with fragmented sales and marketing processes that produce inconsistent buyer experiences and unpredictable results. Gartner reinforces this insight, reporting that seventy-seven percent of buyers found their most recent purchase “very difficult” due to misaligned messages and disjointed touchpoints. Forrester and Nielsen estimate that more than sixty percent of marketing spend is wasted when organizations lack an integrated revenue system. The data confirms the truth I was witnessing. Businesses are not failing because of effort. They are failing because of systemic design.

My background in lean manufacturing and the Theory of Constraints helped me see this more clearly. Years before attending the Grand Prix, I taught leaders the race car driver and pit crew principle as a way to explain constraint management. I would ask a simple question: why are there twenty-one people changing the tires? Leaders would guess: speed, tradition, precision, or the weight of the tires. But the real answer is structural. There is no more physical room to add more people. The system is optimized to its mechanical limit. The individuals are not the constraint. The system is the constraint.

This principle applies directly to client acquisition. When leaders see inconsistent results, they assume the issue is the people. They believe the team is not following the process, not working hard enough, or not motivated. But Deming’s research showed that ninety-four percent of performance problems are caused by the system, not the people. Goldratt’s work proved the same. Remove the constraint, align the system, and performance improves. Ignore the constraint, and no amount of effort changes the outcome.

The realization at the Grand Prix was simple and confronting. Most companies think they have a client acquisition system, but what they actually have is a collection of disconnected parts. They have marketing campaigns, CRM tools, content, sales calls, and isolated metrics. None of these components are designed to operate as a cohesive commercial growth system. Everything depends on people filling in the gaps. Everything depends on improvisation. This is why results fluctuate. This is why growth feels unpredictable. This is why leaders feel pressure. They are operating a business without an integrated acquisition engine.

A system is not marketing. A system is not creativity. A system is not activity. A system is a coordinated sequence of inputs that produce a predictable, measurable output. That is what Formula 1 teams build. That is what most companies lack. And that is why marketing efforts fail. Not because the ideas are poor, but because the structure supporting them does not exist.

AIM defines the structure in three parts. A true client acquisition system includes voice amplification, lead generation, and sales conversion. These components must work together with clarity and alignment. If any one of them is missing or inconsistent, the entire commercial engine breaks flow. This is the client acquisition system most leaders think they have but actually do not. And this is the system that determines whether a business will grow or stall.

There is a simple exercise any leader can do in five minutes. Map the first seven steps of how your business acquires a client. Do not map the official process. Map the real process. When leaders do this honestly, they discover one of three truths. There is no system. There is a partial system held together by individuals. Or there is a system, but it is not aligned. This exercise reveals the gap instantly.

Once the gap is visible, it can be addressed. And this is where AIM’s work begins. AIM helps leaders design, align, and integrate their client acquisition systems. When the commercial growth system works, people perform. When the system fails, people struggle. Companies that achieve predictable revenue growth focus first on the system and then on the team. The ones that stall try to fix people inside a broken structure.

The moment I realized this happened at the 2021 British Grand Prix. The moment leaders realize it for themselves is the moment their client acquisition finally becomes predictable. When they stop blaming people and start examining the system, everything changes. Growth accelerates. Pressure decreases. Teams perform. And leaders finally understand what an actual client acquisition system looks like.

Paul Poirier is the co-founder of AIM, BIG, and TAG, the unified systems-first ecosystem delivering fractional services that help leaders improve commercial growth, financial enablement, and human performance through clarity, alignment, and disciplined execution. His work integrates lean manufacturing, systems thinking, talent development, and operational design to help organizations operate with disciplined simplicity.

 

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Before building this ecosystem with his business partners, Paul spent fourteen years with UPS, beginning as a driver and later serving as Canada’s Call Center Manager and a Sales Manager in Ontario. After UPS, he became a lean manufacturing specialist, helping organizations across more than ten industries successfully transform how they operated with the support of Industry Canada, IRAP, or ACOA. These experiences shaped his conviction that systems and standards—not people—determine long-term performance and execution reliability.

 

Paul later developed the Trust Lens Framework to help leaders understand a critical truth about human performance. Even the best-designed systems require people who are willing to adopt them. The Trust Lens provides a simple way to identify individuals who are open to change and aligned with progress, versus those who resist, create friction, or undermine execution. This framework anchors his belief that talent performance is a system of both structure and behavior, and that alignment must be visible before performance can scale.

 

Today, Paul uses this multidisciplinary background to help distributed organizations and SMBs build systems that scale. His approach begins by creating focus, eliminating noise and ambiguity so leaders can execute with discipline and simplicity. By reducing complexity and establishing clear lines of information flow, Paul helps organizations create environments where people perform at their potential because the system enables them to stay focused, aligned, and consistent.

 

Paul believes unequivocally that systems—not people—determine performance. When leaders fix the system, results improve predictably and the team rises to its potential.