Our focus this month, for the newsletter and blogs, is on our just-released book Closing is NOT Your Problem! With this book, for the first time in history, the problem of 20 percent of salespeople making 80 percent of the sales—commonly known as the “80/20 rule”—is fully solved.
The 80/20 Rule
There’s a rule or law, also known as the Pareto Principle, that states that 80 percent of effects come from 20 percent of the causes. In sales, this rule is modified to state that 80 percent of sales are made by 20 percent of salespeople, which has been observed and written about over the last century.
In the years of research for the book, we encountered this problem again, and again, and again. We were very effective in creating sales teams and increasing income. We could walk into just about any company and make the sales go up. But not every company could continue the growth and maintain it.
We knew that if we could improve the top 20 percent of salespeople making the sales, we could improve sales in a company. But what if someone wasn’t in that 20 percent? If they were inconsistent in their sales, they were just labeled as part of the 80 percent who didn’t impact the sales numbers and nothing more was done for them. There was no solution. Nobody asked, “Wait a minute—how do you fix them?”
We realized that we needed to find out what was missing that could effectively address this “no solution” problem of the 80 percent.
20-60-20
A significant discovery came about when we were doing a project with Microsoft, which was having trouble with its partner network. We were experienced Microsoft Partners. Each Microsoft partner was an independently owned business, so Microsoft didn’t have a direct management channel into partners—yet they needed those partners to sell their products.
The 80/20 rule was very apparent in this situation. Even within the Microsoft partner network, 80 percent of the sales were being made by 20 percent of the partners. When we went in and spoke to the partner companies, they found it there also: 80 percent of the sales were being made by 20 percent of the sales reps.
In researching this further, we isolated a pattern of “20 – 60 – 20.” As we knew, the top 20 percent made most of the sales. But then we found that there was a middle 60 percent who really wanted to sell but were inconsistent. The bottom 20 percent did not have the desire or ability to sell and should never have had careers in sales.
We found that if we focused on that middle 60 percent of salespeople, we could change an entire company. Getting that middle 60 percent to become consistent put pressure on the top 20 percent to produce more to stay on top. So overall, the company sales growth was transformed and maintained.
Naturally, the bottom 20 percent were replaced or just no longer needed, as sales were no longer just a “numbers game.”
To learn more, buy and read Closing is NOT Your Problem!
