THE 80/20 RULE: A FEW ANGLES

The 80/20 rule says that 80 percent of your business probably comes from 20% of your customers, give or take.     Upon analysis, many find that 80% of their sales and marketing results come from maybe 20% of the actions they take.

No matter what your profession or business, it is always valuable to “take a step back” to see what is getting the most results.    In the absence of doing this, one can inadvertently spend time, staff resources and energy pursuing “low yield” activities.

In our printing business, we try to regularly take that step back to assess what is working and what is not, both in terms of sales and marketing and operations.

Have you ever looked to see what actions led to your biggest clients, projects, and sales? Here are some ways to review and analyze this:

Did a particular type of promotion cause the results?

Were referrals from other customers responsible?

Did one or more particular employees deliver exceptional service that caused clients to trust you more and open up new opportunities?

Some other new way your business became visible? New signage? Updated website?

If you can’t get the answer from your analysis, you can also survey those customers and ask them.

One way or another, if you find out what caused an improvement, you are in the best position to expand on that, reinforce it, and continue it.

Can you identify any other questions you can ask or ways you can analyze your business to identify sources of success?  Write back with any experience you have with ways of doing this type of analysis and your successes in this area.