The largest and fastest-growing companies do not cold call new customers. In fact- the fastest growing companies have no real sales or marketing at all.

A company with a genuinely useful technology product will have customers who would use- and often pay for- the product. Which sounds obvious- except that the classical mode of sales and marketing forces companies to spend high overhead on pushing customers into using their products.

Your youtubes, facebooks, twitters, 37signals, even googles, hotmails, meebos, flickrs, and even your Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and UBS’s have a simple sales and marketing strategy: when customers use you, they tell more customers about you. Sales not required.

But the innovation of ‘selling without selling’ is more in terms of indirect sales strategy. Instead of directly approaching customers with your product; approach them from a different angle. Become a resource in the sector you do business. Create a compliance or seal of approval that creates your market for you. And like Apple; reinforce the culture (art, music, aesthetics) of the world your customers inhabit. Universities sell the requirement of remaining on campus 4 years; not the luxury.

Search Engine Optimization is a shining web 2.0 example of selling without selling. Create a valuable resource that other resources link to; and sales will happen anyway. One of the reasons the internet sees a better ROI for marketing dollars is that the ads are ‘targeted’ and often they are not ads at all- merely blog or forum posts. Help your customer do what they wanted to do- and they’ll probably buy your product anyway.

Selling without selling is a principle that works in most walks of life. In relationships; do not directly confront your peers and list on your fingers your good qualities; you should instead subtlely reference capabilities and interests. Sometimes selling a quality is a matter of concealing it. One of the most powerful references to your own abilities is to conceal capabilities until others ask for help in mastering those themselves. Teaching is one of the most effective forms of sales.

You should still have a sales team to close on the leads. But acquiring leads is better accomplished by pull than push. You know you have chosen a good store location when customers are already knocking on the door. All you have to do is respond.