Let Sales Superstars Be Sales Superstars: No Way Out Of The 80/20 Rule

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Dan

If you’ve been reading and implementing the advice in these posts, you’ve done a great deal of talking with your underperformers and have maybe even gotten rid of a few of them. Tough choices, no doubt.

You’ve then most likely spent considerable time training the remainder of your team, starting with your two most talented sales people and moved on with recruiting for some new recruits.

Once you’ve finally built or rebuilt your team of superstars, (a lengthy process in many companies as we all know), what’s next for you to do?

Start looking for more sales people with the same qualities as your sales superstars. But even when. Even if you managed to put together a team of 10 or more superstars, a rare feat, there’s still going to be two sales people who are better than the others. Continue reading →

Pareto’s Legacy: Adapt Your Strategies Based On The Talents Of Your Best Sales People

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Dan

The 80/20 rule—or the Pareto Principle—tells us that our best results, 80% of productivity, would come from just 20% of our efforts. As a top sales manager, how do you work around this knowledge so that your team of 10 sales people could improve itself to be on par with your two best sales superstars?

This time we’ll discuss a real-life example of how the 80/20 rule has helped a manager transform employees by focusing on excellence.

Here is the thing – top sales managers should have a knack for sensing sales people with real talent. They must have a good nose for it, the ability to smell a sales person’s determination to become excellent and above average. Without this, then the person is simply looking for another job to fill his or her time. No one wants to hire somebody who’s only looking for a paycheck.

Why is that? Because those kinds of employees are most likely underperformers. And top sales managers are aware that if they spend too much time on underperformers, they have less time guiding the good to become truly great. Continue reading →

The Lazy Sales Managers Way To Get More Done And Make More Money

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Dan

Top Sales Manager Wouldn’t your sales managers love to get more done and make more money with less effort?

That all sounds great, you might say…but how do YOU actually do it?

You simply apply the 80/20 rule.

For those of you who may not know, a little history lesson first is in order…

The 80/20 rule—or the Pareto Principle, named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto—states that 80% of effects is the result of 20% of the causes. For you this simply means that 80% of your sales will come from, roughly, only 20% of your sales people.

But when a sales manager applies the 80/20 rule, he can simply get more done in less time by simplifying and throwing out the time-wasters that just don’t matter.

Before we tell you how to do it, let’s first prepare you first for some eventual consequences. Continue reading →