“90% of the people out there are good…”
Wednesday 11 November, 2009

As many of you know, I am a reserve deputy and in addition to working uniform patrol in various cities in Orange County, I also work special events. Last Friday, I worked at a music festival where various bands were playing all types of music, (rap, metal, rock) entertaining the masses. There were young people, old people, families and every race and creed across the spectrum.

The headlining band, was a very popular metal band (think Corn) and they were late getting on stage. Unfortunately, the city has a strict noise moratorium and we were going to be required to literally pull the plug if they attempted to play past 11pm. As the hour got closer, the band attempted to turn down the amplification of the music hoping it would solve the problem, but the crowd began to get restless as they could not hear the music. Crowd control can be a dangerous environment and our command staff decided we needed to prepare for an ‘unruly’ assembly, so all of the deputies gathered back at our command post (away from the view of the concert-goers).

As we were putting on our helmets, putting on our gear and lining up in our stand-by positions, our commanding officer said the following:
“Remember, 90% of the people out there are good, law abiding citizens who we want to protect and ensure their safety.” Immediately after, one of the deputies replied, “Agreed. Now, let’s go get the 10%!”

I laughed, as this reminded me of the Pareto principle and how it frequently manifests in the business world. I am sure everyone is familiar with the Pareto principle (80% of the effects are a result of 20% of the causes) and how it is incredibly accurate with regards to aspects of business, especially sales and marketing. 80% of the sales are brought in by 20% of the salespeople, 20% of your marketing efforts, create 80% of the opportunities, etc.

We need to remember on a daily, weekly and monthly basis that not all of our efforts will result in success. If I told you that only 20% of your efforts would result in success, some people might not get out of bed!  The secret is to continue to build a pipeline of prospects and marketing initiatives and remember that activity breeds opportunity. You never know which of your efforts (only 20%) will result in bringing in the results (80%), and you won’t “find” that 20% unless you get out there and make things happen.

Tags: sales marketing pareto

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