Meet Revenue - Game Changer Sales with 80/20 Rule
Need to harvest the valuable market? Need to harness the market potential? Having holes in your revenue bag? Not maximizing the full revenue potential of your sales team. It is time to turn your sales team into a revenue force. It is time to deploy the game changer catalyst into your sales process.
Koch (1998) espouses that the 80/20 Principle can and should be used by every intelligent person in their daily life, by every organization, and by every social grouping and form of society. Koch (1998) affirms that The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs or rewards. Taken literally, this means that, for example, 80 per cent of what you achieve in your job comes from 20 per cent of the time spent. Thus for all practical purposes, four fifths of the effort—a dominant part of it—is largely irrelevant. This is contrary to what people normally expect. So the 80/20 Principle states that there is an inbuilt imbalance between causes and results, inputs and outputs, and effort and reward. A good benchmark for this imbalance is provided by the 80/20 relationship: a typical pattern will show that 80 per cent of outputs result from 20 per cent of inputs; that 80 per cent of consequences flow from 20 per cent of causes; or that 80 per cent of results come from 20 per cent of effort.
The Revenue cannot wait!
With the growing sophistication of today’s customers having a plethora of offerings and options through listless and endless knock-off on the business landscape; with competition becoming stiff and the tightening of economies with many businesses entering dire straits mode, it is abundantly clear, that the revenue cannot wait.
Many firms both small and large entities must re-strategize and re-tool their business models by the minute and the changing moments due to the constant alterations and modifications transforming the way and approaches of serving customers and the all-important element of Sales. Every second we waste in approaching the customer, every moment we delay in ceasing the opportunity to serve the customer in our uniqueness and difference with respect our brand and identity, we lose revenue. The tradition of 8am-5pm sales belongs to the Pleistocene era. We live in a new era where customer evolution is swift and we are presented with myriads of opportunities and channels to serve the customer awake or asleep. The revenue indeed cannot wait. The issue is about the readiness of our salesforce and our sales tools.
No more sales as usual
“Difficult customers and hard selling terrain, she murmured to herself. “I tried all my techniques but that man wouldn’t budge”, he soliloquized. The truth about sales is that, there are no difficult customers. Quite to the contrary, we instead observed that many have weak techniques, haphazard attitudes and wrong customers. Non-paying customers, not ready to pay customers and customers who don’t add value but rather throw the spanner into your sales process are bad customers and we have to keep an eye on such. Secondly doing Sales as usual will not cut it any longer. Selling the usual features, advantages and benefits doesn’t fly any longer. This is the new age and having wheat is more valuable than having chaff account. We need to keep an eye on the quality of the leads in our pipeline to determine the value of the output churned out by these accounts. Sales as usual with a large database and leads out of which 95% will all lead to a dead end, with excuses, postponement, deferments and total cancellations should jolt every sales professional and spark the desire towards the adoption of the game changing catalyst, the 80/20 principle.
Not everyone is your customer
The Pareto principle affirms and highlights the reality of this maxim. If 20% of your existing clientele are the direct result of your 80% profit, then the handwriting is on the wall that not everyone is your customer. More often than not, myriads have come to believe that in our bid to want to survive or stay alive in business, we need every customer. This is the condoned falsity and painful reality that have collapsed most businesses both large and small. The notion of the concept of a “target market” and “market niche” points us in the direction of where to focus. Not everyone is your customer! I have often heralded this notion in our sales performance training sessions to many sales teams. We need customers and we need their business but not all accounts and customers will ensure growth and profits. In as much as we need customers, we don’t need all customers. We don’t need non-paying customers, non-conformists, value destroying clients and relationship breakers as customers. It is obvious without customers we don’t have a business and it is obvious with the above types as customers, our business dreams are over.
We need our customers. And these are customers who understand our business, emotionally and financially ready and prepared to align and fit our vision, readiness to support and align with our set strategy and are economically viable and beneficial with potential to stand with the objectives we have set to accomplish. To make the difference in sales, we need game changers as customers. Customers who add and impact the processes through collaborative support in the value chain.
Change or Die (Switch from low value actions to high value pursuits)
In the arms of the 80/20 rule as a guide, the days of selling products and services the old fashioned way should be abandoned with speedy alertness and decisiveness. We either change or die! Wasting over three (3) hours in different sessions with clients who will not commit irrespective of how you present your solutions, qualify your pitch process is surely a wasted effort. Wasting time pursuing accounts with no potential and zero sap is a non-starter. Taking empty words from potential buyers as guaranteed promises in sales will no longer fly. Gathering names and contacts into databases that produces nil results are just a sheer waste of sales efforts and companies resources. It is time to switch from low value actions to high value pursuits it is time for the switch to Insight and value-based selling. This is where using the Pareto principle as a magnifying glass, you target client that are in the wheat category, have potential, buyer readiness and the willingness to recognize the win-win value in the business relationship. With insight selling techniques, we must learn to connect, convince and collaborate with today’s customers in a way that makes our brand and our persona at sales so memorable
The focus on the vital Few
Two things are worth noting. First, the concept of few is relative with respect to your business and who you are looking at and more critically who you have positioned to look at you. Secondly special description of vital cannot glossed over and overemphasized in the domain of having a game changer in your sales process. Vital is the stress word that needs all the attention of the whole team and the whole Sales leadership. Vital few conjoined points us in the direction of focus and quality. Who are we looking at and what customers are we targeting to ensure that we achieve the set numbers and the business objectives? To have an ultra-performance in sales is to deliberately ditch and divorce every chaff relationship and account. Nurturing accounts with potential is key, focusing efforts and resources on the vital few who deliver is critical. There should be no room on the bus for chaff accounts and wasted efforts. Every effort spent and engaged must be accounted for in the sales process and it should point the business in the direction of either present potential or future opportunity. There is no hope in sales. We sell by stating our claims and ceasing the available opportunities that will get us to our landing page. We grow by nurturing relationships that have the potential and keys to make it either in our today or into our future. We don’t need everyone on the bus. Some must make it later and others never.
We need the vital few whose attitudes and business pays the bills, enhance our reputation, reward our efforts and grow our brands to alternate maneuvers.
80/20 Sales Process, Marketing and the Business
What is the point in selling features, advantages and benefits of products and services when it doesn’t close the sales process? You are right, it is about the customer. As a matter of urgency, your positioning and pitch in sales must be about that unique and different customer. There are many chaff accounts you should escape. There are many wheat accounts you should pursue. In the end, it is about the vital few who make the difference in the sales process and its resultant outcomes. Using the 80/20 principle will help one focus on nurturing relationships from which we can harness its full impact-yielding potential.
It is time to focus on the key factors whose presence or absence impact the business, the sales process and marketing efforts. We need effective collaborators in our business system who believe in value, drive value and will generate value for the strategies that have been formulated and put in place. We need the right few people, tools, agencies and systems that will ensure that we have our eye on quality and positioned at we getting valuable and measurable outcomes all the time. After all, we know that it is the presence of the vital few that makes the greatest difference. We are after the wheat not the chaff, we need those who create surpluses and profits not losses and deficits and this must be our focus through and through. In the spirit and insight of the Pareto effect, let’s prioritize our efforts and create the winning mold that will change the outcomes in our sales process and business with sterling performance.