A little over twenty years ago, a friend of mine was struggling in law school. He was juggling a lot of activities: participating in law review, preparing to win a role as a clerk over the summer, training for a mini-triathlon, and school – oh yeah, he had those pesky classes to attend. Obviously, this guy was driven (and still is, by the way) and enjoyed doing his best. That was the problem – he wasn’t doing his best. In fact, his performance was insufficient in all four of these areas.
One Saturday afternoon, he joined me and another friend to watch the Gators play basketball, and he shared his challenge with us. That’s when I first heard about the 80% Rule. Our common friend told us about it. In summary, he explained that super achievers take on many things at 80%. If they do more than that, then they’re spending unnecessary time in the weeds. Less than 80%, and they’re not paying enough attention to the details. In relation to our law school buddy, he was going to the 100thpercentile in detail on all four of his pursuits, and that’s why he was struggling. No one could possibly hit every detail of those four goals. If he wanted to achieve his goals, he needed to step back a little in each of them.
Don’t misunderstand. The 80% Rule is not about giving only 80% effort. On the contrary, it’s about giving 100% effort, but taking a task to the 80th percentile. An easy example is prospecting for new business. It’s a lot more productive to contact 50 accounts over a two-week period that it is to spend two weeks researching one account and making the greatest cold call in history. This rule worked miracles for an analytical perfectionist like I used to be. My productivity sky-rocketed after embracing the 80% Rule (and so did my law school friend’s).
However, in today’s ultra-customized world of selling, is the 80% Rule still relevant?
Yes, and no. I believe the concept is just as relevant as ever, but the ratio has changed. Sales professionals of today and the next twenty years will benefit from a modified version of the 80% Rule … let’s call it the 90% Rule. (How’s that for creativity?)
Today’s business-to-business sales person will benefit from tailoring their message, targeting their prospects, and spending more research time per touch; but they’ll still need to avoid getting too much into the weeds. Paralysis by analysis is still a reality, and the best sales people stay away from it.
In conclusion, our 80% Rule is still relevant, but in today’s world of b2b sales, the 90% Rule is ideal. We should be focusing deeper on less accounts than we used to, but we still need to have a collection of diverse activities.
