Top 1% Sales Reps
Extreme Sales Success and the 80:20:20:20 Rule
Pareto’s Principle, widely known as the 80:20 rule, as applied to sales states that 80% of the sales are made by the top 20% of the reps. This rule can be extended further to state that the top 20% of this 20% makes 80% of those sales, so that the top 4% (20% of 20% = 4%) of the reps make 64% (80% of 80% = 64%) of the total sales.
Applied further yet again, the top 20% of this 4% is the elite of the elite, the top 1% (technically the math works out to 0.8%). This extremely small number of reps makes over half of the total sales (80% of 64% = 51.2%).
An interesting twist here is to apply the rule in both directions. Then it is seen that the top 20% of the bottom 80% does 80% of the sales for that group, and so on.
This chart illustrates the concept for a 100 rep team:
| Group | Rule | #Reps | %Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 1% | 80:20:20:20 | 1 | 51.2 |
| Top 4% | 80:20:20 | 4 | 64 |
| Top 20% | 80:20 | 20 | 80 |
| Bottom 80% | 80:20 | 80 | 20 |
| Top 20% of Bottom 80% | 16 | 16 | |
| Top 20% of Bottom 60% | 13 | 3.2 | |
| Top 20% of Bottom 40% | 10 | 0.64 | |
| Top 20% of Bottom 20% | 8 | 0.13 | |
| Remaining of 80% | 33 | 0.03 |