80/20 Rule

The 80/20 Rule For those of you who know me, I am not a big New Year’s Resolution person. Basically I think they are just compromises with our Creator, “please get me through this night and I will never drink again”. This being the middle of February most of those resolutions have gone out the window. I am going to give you another way to look at things. The 80/20 rule, for those of you who are familiar with the rule it states that 20% percent of the things in our life cause 80% of our results or issues. From a business side, 20% of the people we work with do 80% of the work. 20% of the people we work with cause 80% of the problems or 20% of the people we work with drive us 80% crazy. From a sales side 20% of our customers generate 80% of our revenue, so am I taking care of the customers who butter my bread? For the sales people out there what are the 20% of the objections you hear 80% of the time? I don’t have any money in my budget is a big one, the real issue is not money it is as a salesperson we have not created value for the customer. Money is the easy objection. Take a step back from your selling day and think “what are the objections I hear most of the time?” Until we learn how to overcome those objections we stay in the middle of the our sales team. From a management side, we have our go to workers who do 20% of the work. So if we are in crisis mode we go to these people because we can trust that they will get the job done without rolling their eyes and we say to the 80% who cause the problems “not to touch anything and don’t talk to anyone”. From a personal side we wear 20% of our clothing 80% of the time. How many of you ever thought to yourself “how many blue shirts does that guy have?” So when you are getting your summer clothes out this year and putting your winter clothes in storage, ask yourself “did I wear this either this year or last year and if the answer is no, give it to Goodwill. I know there are some of you who are stilling holding onto an outfit because your significant other has promise to take you “out on the town”. My answer is if they have not done it yet your get also give that outfit to Goodwill. With that said, look into your own world and think “what are the things that keep showing up and causing me my issues?” I had a baseball coach tell me one time “Smitty you will never see another fastball in your life until you can hit a curve ball” he was right because that curve ball was the thing holding me back from being a somewhat good hitter. So when you look at your resolutions that you have always tired to attack, lose weight, save money or find love, what are the 20% of the issues that keep showing up to derail you? Take a moment and circle back and look into the past and ask yourself what are the things in my life that keep coming up and biting me in the behind? We are so quick to jump from project to project to project that we don’t take the time to circle back and ask ourselves “what went well and what do I need to do differently next time this issue happens?” So I ask you,” what are the 20% of the things in your life that are causing you 80% of your issues?” If you take a look at these probably little things and take action to “resolve” those areas you won’t need to be making resolutions next year just goals that you want to achieve.