"Tommy Boy" or "Top Gun"
When building a high quality sales execution team you have to be quick to identify the "Tommy Boy" Gene. If you were born before 1985 then you have seen both Top Gun and the Tommy Boy movie. These movies are vastly different but the main characters share some very important traits as it relates to hiring sales professionals . When using the term Top Gun for sales people you are describing that person on your team that is the best. When people hear Tommy Boy they think of the blundering sales guy trying to sell brake pads to save his dads company and the town that depends on it. So it seems obvious that you would hire the Top Gun sales person every time. Then why do so many companies still hire the Tommy Boy sales professional. Is it because they are well liked, popular, funny and gets along with everyone? If it is so obvious then why do some many companies continue to replay the same sales training tapes? If we are providing sales training to experienced sales people then the obvious must not be so obvious. Are you successfully identifying Tommy Boys from Top Guns?
Lets see if looking at the DNA of a Top Gun Sales Person helps explain how so many companies hire Tommy Boys and try to train them to be Top Gun Sales people. What is the DNA of a Top Gun Sales person?
1. Need for Achievement - Set Goals, Takes Risk, Problem Solver
2. Competitiveness - Need to Win, Be Better than Peers, Sale is a Contest
3. Optimism - Body Armor to Rejection, Thrives under Adversity, Glass Half Full
If you are purely evaluating your current or future sales team based on past sale achievement, optimism, competitive knowledge or how much the other team members like them, then you likely have a team of Tommy Boys. The only real way to know if you have Top Guns or Tommy Boys is to see them in action. The strand in the DNA that makes the difference is only identified in the delivery or execution of these 3 traits. They may look good on paper and meet the DNA check list but what was the road they took to get to that place. Did the car crash, burn, run over a deer or lose the top on the way to the meeting? I urge hiring managers to look further back than just a few year when getting to know your candidates or be prepared to spend a lot on training 12 months later when you realize you have Tommy Boy and not Maverick.
白人の三沢伊兵衛(邦画の「雨あがる」をご参照)
9 年Thanks for this perspective, Marc. Where entering, standing up, and sustaining a Sales function for Japan, though, I would counsel against a 100 percent as-is application of this approach. The Top Gun type in a Japanese context is *very* often the version of Maverick who gets "Goose" killed. For example, the (Japanese) guy who, in the 1990's, launched the Japan operations of a top global enterprise software company (he was recruited to be the Japan sub CEO from a sales leadership role with one of the top hardware/software/SI enterprises in Japan), nearly sank it with a reckless over-application of the 3 attributes you discuss -- via major (and covered-up) rev-rec violations. The Top Gun type who brings in sustainable, quality, growing revenue in the Japan market has the 3 attributes but channels them through, well, channels. He/she is "Master & Commander" of a flotilla of VAR's and partner SI's/consultancies. That takes a 4th attribute -- "servant" leadership.