Rethinking the 80/20 Principle in Sales
What if you could only ‘work’ one day of the week and make the same money/impact/revenue as you did before…rather than working a full 5!?
Most would Salespeople would say — ‘Of course’ , yet many are still wasting time on doing things that has little overall impact to their Targets/Quotas & Revenue.
Another question we should be asking ourselves daily is
— Am I doing the most impactful things with my time? —
The Pareto principle states:
On average …80 percent of your efforts yield a mere 20 percent of return in value/revenue/…
..which in turn means that 20 percent of our Sales & Marketing efforts — lead to- a whopping !!!!!!! — 80 percent of revenue.
So what then do I do with my 80% time / 4 Days…to be more— effective & efficient — rather than doing things that are inconsequential.
Inconsequential means — Inputs or actions that don’t learn from a-foregoing events/prior knowledge/information or doing tasks that don’t improve on previous results
Inconsequential, means not in sequence, and not making the required impact.
A telephone call might be ‘inconsequential ‘ activity….if you haven’t done enough research on a Prospect — to know whether they’re ready to be called — or introduced yourself with a succinct message for example on LinkedIn.
Sequence-(ing)of course is the opposite, and is— a buzzword in Sales — because it defines and acts as a major premise for building algorithms and smart decision making.
It also forms the rationale of how certain actions can have different outcomes, but with Algorithms ( ok and AI ) we can now automate/program actions for outcomes — replace tasks that were repetitive before — for example by picking up a keyword in a response to a message on LinkedIn, to flag & inform us that further education on a topic is needed, or deeper qualification is required to know the hook for that person, so to continue the conversation.
* Side note —taking into consideration that the Buyers Journey is a non-linear one ( even more so in future), then it adds to the argument that in order to learn what works, time spent on non-automated tasks…will become increasingly relevant.
Marketing’s quandary
If hypothetically, 80% of marketing is delivering only 20% of real value customers, why don’t they focus their efforts/bots elsewhere…to know customer betters, or look for purchase signals!?
If I look at my Inbox( or rather Promo & Social tabs), the continued efforts of companies to target me, after leaving my details…does more harm to the brand in my opinion… likened to force-feeding a win ( which rarely happens in B2B sales) versus having a plan to leverage a ‘natural’ convert from Inbound content.
Many financial services firms still bother to phone me… to setup an appointment ( for what!?), not spending time to look for anything other than my mobile number.
( I implore all Financial Services companies to stop paying money for Cold Calling , and stop wasting their money and damaging their brand)
Running multichannel campaigns makes this ‘science of knowing’ more complex, and budget allocation from learned data and metrics (that matter) should be like the movie Moneyball — for smarter decision making/ shortening Sales Cycles, and to identify touchpoints with Customers who’s not yet READY to be called.
But what then are some actions Salespeople can do to be more effective with their time??
Here’s a few suggestions to Founders/Sales Directors to focus on (and incorporate into their Sales Onboarding packs) when looking to improve the quality of Salesteams ( to give feedback to Marketing, to automate better):
- Understanding different Buyers Journey entry points
- Technical product understanding & improvement, and how to differentiate the UVP in conversation — a whole article on itself , why ‘pre-sales’ technical experts demand will increase.
- Better understanding different Buyers Personas — DIVAS.( Decision Makers, Influencers..)
- Prioritization of leads and activities-of-high-impact
- Continuous feedback loops to marketing for better high-touch ‘in person’ engagements
Being able to master the above will be a good start to being more effective with your time as a Salesperson — and turn from what is seen as low yield activities, into (hopefully) — high yield results.
Would love to hear your feedback.
Andries
