Top Sales Manager Blog

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.

That’s the beauty of the 80/20 rule, and there’s no escaping it.

After all, the 80/20 rule—or the Pareto Principle—goes directly against modern Western thinking. We all like to believe that everyone should be treated equally. No life is more important than the other. All human beings are equal.

But are all of us made equal? No.

Give two persons a shovel, a gun, a pen, a chainsaw, or a computer, and one is bound to do better than the other. When it comes to doing jobs, people are very much unequal. Simply put, some are naturally better at doing certain things—more talented, if you want to call it that—than others.

If you want proof, go ahead and ask teachers what they think about the “No Child Left Behind” policy. The natural reaction would be to roll their eyes at you and point you toward the door. But some might go into detail how a pain in the ass it is to force a bad student to become average while the top students get everything right all the time without even batting an eye.

Most teachers absolutely hate this policy…as do great sales managers.

Because no matter how hard you try, every child is different, and the exact same thing applies to sales people.

It doesn’t matter how good you are as a sales manager, or how many years you’ve been in the sales industry, the 80/20 rule will almost always show up in every aspect of your business, whether you like it or not.

The trick is to not fight it. Instead, harmonize with it. Let sales superstars be sales superstars. About the rest of the team, continue to nurture their talents and abilities so they could start producing even better results.

Recall Jean’s key puncher story. Today Jean still holds the national record, while the rest of the people in her team averages about a third of what she accomplishes in a month, but still well above the national average.

To learn more about sales management, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Got anything to share about the 80/20 rule? Leave a comment below.

Filed under: Leading, The 80-20 Rule by ralphburns