Back when the Big 4 (accounting firms) were the Big 8, I discovered the word ‘rainmaker’.  Rainmakers are the people who bring the big bucks into large consulting, legal and accounting firms.  The Big 8 were downsizing, and for the first time in history, partners were being fired.

Partners started showing up at our recruiting firm, looking for jobs.  Not rainmakers, however.  They had job security.  They brought in the money.   I was young and impressionable, and vowed to be a rainmaker.

You are in the Bell Curve . . . Somewhere.

The skills of sales professionals distribute nicely across a Bell Curve, with the vast majority in the below average, average and above average categories.  At the two extremes are those barely competent to get out of bed in the morning, and the brilliant exceptions.  These are the rainmakers.

It has been my pleasure to know any number of brilliant exceptions, and most salespeople would be well advised to accept their status in one of the below, to above average, categories.  As Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame observed, “If all the children are above average, where do all the average adults come from?”