The Rainmakers

Bob Hampton was the first sales manager I had at Xerox. He called me into his office and told me he had selected me from the rookie team to take over a new territory. I'll never forget how he ended that first conversation. He said, "Phillips, I don't expect miracles but I want you to make it rain."

At the time, I was too excited to ask what I thought might be a stupid question, "he wants me to make it rain?" Months later I asked and he explained that a "rainmaker" was a person who could go anywhere, no matter what the conditions and produce results.

"Rainmakers are the people everyone on the team depends upon," Bob said. "They charge up the side of a mountain, alone, talk privately to the sales gods and soon the orders begin falling from the skies onto lands once barren of sales."

We laughed and I asked what he thought were the attributes of a great "rainmaker." He said that there were basically four virtues shared by all of the "rainmakers" he had ever seen: Optimism, Ego, Greed, and Empathy.

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