We recently came across the below matrix, which does a great job of summing up different types of professionals. 

With any matrix, the bottom left equals bad, and the upper right equals good. You can probably look at this and immediately think of a who’s who amongst your peers:

• The coaster is on their way out.

• The politician is weirdly involved in random things at the company.

• The doer is in the upper middle of the leaderboard.

• The dynamo is at the top of the leaderboard. 

• The artisan is telling everyone the customized and uniquely clever things they did to win a deal that took 3x as long as it should have. 

The owner is the one who stands out from the crowd. Owners have parts of other personas like excellent performance or craftsmanship but display two key differences. First, they problem solve and get better at things on their own. Second, they ensure solutions are made available to the broader org and don’t remain well-kept secrets. To sum it plainly, they figure things out and share what they learn. 

Now, you may be thinking, “why would I want to help other reps I’m competing with?”. A few years back, I would probably say the same thing. However, that mentality is precisely why so many top AEs get pegged as dynamos who shouldn’t be doing anything besides closing certain types of deals in their career. 

Whether it’s moving to larger deals, management, or just more compensation, the path forward is to create and show impact, not just execution.