Beat the 80/20 Rule by Identifying Top Performers

It has long been accepted that 80 percent of all products and services are sold by just 20 percent of the salespeople. The so-called "80-20 Rule" is a challenge to all sales executives who strive to build exceptional sales organizations.

When people make an honest effort to do a good job and fail, it is usually because they were in the jobs that did not fit. An analysis shows that over half (55%) of salespeople are miscast. They lack the basic qualities required for success in sales and should be doing something else for a living. Of those remaining, half (25%) could succeed in sales, but at the moment, they are selling the wrong product or service. That leaves 20% of the salespeople who are in jobs that they fit. These are the people who sell about 80 percent of the world's products and services.

This suggests that about half of the people in sales should never have been hired for sales jobs in the first place, and another 25 percent should have been hired to sell something else. Thus, the typical employer may be making three hiring mistakes for each correct one. Obviously, the best place to attack the 80-20 rule is in the hiring process. When hiring salespeople, the objective is to hire only those who have the characteristics of the top 20 percent who are really doing all the selling.

How do so many people who lack the basic qualities required for success in sales get hired? Why do people who can sell wind up trying to sell the wrong product or service? Why? Hiring on gut reactions. "First impressions based on emotions, biases, chemistry, personality, and stereotyping cause more hiring mistakes than any other single factor," says Lou Adler, in Hiring With Your Head.

In interviewing potential salespeople, the decision to hire (or not) is made in the first 4.3 minutes of the interview. We then spend the rest of the interview justifying our decision.

Peter Drucker states: "Chances are that up to 66% of your company's hiring decisions will prove to be mistakes in the first twelve months." This doesn't mean they want to leave - in fact most of them want to stay!

What would it be worth to you to increase your 20 percent of top performers to 30 percent? What are the characteristics of top performers in your organization? What is their learning style, energy level, or attitude like? How sociable, assertive, accommodating, decisive, or independent are they? If you have not previously used assessments, you might consider doing so. A reliable assessment can bring objectivity to your decision-making and predict how they will perform throughout the sales cycle. Are they strong prospectors, or do they have call reluctance? What are their relationship-building skills, are they a self-starter, or sales closing abilities? What would happen if you had this information at the time you make your decision instead of six months into the hire?

In a study by the University of Manchester, interviewing and reference checking result in a 26% chance (one in four) to make a good hiring decision. With job-matching through assessments, it raises to 75% (three out of four). What effect does this have on retention? Harvard Business Review stated that over a 6-14 month period after hiring, that retention increased four to five times for white-collar positions.

Many assessments give feedback about the person's personality and preferences without actually matching them to the position. The most valuable assessments include cognitive learning abilities, the highest predictor of job success, as well as preferences and behaviour and a distortion factor to indicate the integrity of the answers.

Creating a success pattern of the characteristics of your top performers and then creating a pattern of your bottom performers will help you to clearly identify the key characteristics and behaviours that make the difference.

This can be your winning edge in beating the 80-20 rule.