This document discusses the problem of underperforming sales teams and provides suggestions for improvement. It begins by asking the reader to honestly assess why only the top 20% of their sales team delivers results, while the other 80% underperforms. It then explains that this 80/20 split is a common problem known as Pareto's law. The document advocates developing a "total sales culture" by focusing on recruiting and training the top 20% of performers. It argues that often recruitment decisions are made on emotional rather than logical grounds, resulting in missed opportunities and rising costs from poor hiring choices. The goal is to help companies find and develop top sales performers in order to improve overall performance.

2. © 2008 Pareto Law

3. Introduction
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Asking Questions Total Sales Culture
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Ask yourself honestly. In my sales team why do only
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You have probably made some bad recruitment
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the top 20% deliver the goods? What’s more, why
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decisions and you have probably lost some good
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do I put up with 80% of my team cruising through life
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people for want of professional sales development.
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and getting in the way of achieving our potential?
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You will most likely have some negative elements in
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your company who think sales is somehow not in
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Don’t worry, it’s a problem that has been around
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their vocabulary, let alone their job description.
n culture of sales success throughout your
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for some time and made famous by the economist
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Working with Pareto Law means you can close the
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Vilfredo Pareto who first decreed the 80:20 law. It
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door on past underperformance. From now on we
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doesn’t make you a bad company but it does
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aim to develop a total sales culture starting with the
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suggest you have some questions to ask yourself
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right individuals and a commitment to developing
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about how you recruit and develop your sales teams.
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those individuals.
Our goal is to help you find and develop your
top 20% performers.
© 2008 Pareto Law

5. T
The Great Recruitment Myth
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Reasons and Pretexts
P x E
Expensive Mistakes
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Why would you ever blame failure on hiring the
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Few employers truly face up to the cost of mistakes
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Few employers
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wrong people when there are so many other valid
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made in recruitment. It starts with the wasted salary,
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truly face up to the cost
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reasons for poor sales performance? Budget
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the overheads, the car and training. Bad enough.
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of mistakes made in
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constraints, pricing, company branding; in short
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But it’s so much worse than that. What about the
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anything that means we don’t have to own up to the
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lost opportunities, the damage to your company’s
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mistake of hiring people who cant sell.
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reputation or the destruction of a long term customer
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relationship? Consider also the disruption to your
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The sad truth is, recruitment is a lottery, where often
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team caused by the rogue employee, bent of sowing
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decisions are made on emotional grounds and d
discord to divert attention from his or her own
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the overheads, the car
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justified with logic. So people cover up, fudge, make
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failings. and training. But it’s so
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excuses and meanwhile opportunities are being lost
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and cost is rising. T
The plain truth is; organisations often know so little
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about the people they hire, they might as well flip a
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coin or stick a pin in a list of names.
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that.
© 2008 Pareto Law

7. Beyond the One Hour Interview
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Good at Interviews or Good at Selling?
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Ego and Empathy
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Traditional interviews tell you if you get on with H
Having placed thousands of graduate sales
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interview cannot
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someone, whether they share your tastes, whether
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executives with hundreds of companies we have
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you find them genial or not. An interview will also tell
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learned that there are no short cuts. You need a
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you whether the person is good at interviews. All very
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large pool of talent to select the very best from. We
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interesting but what they don’t tell you is: can this
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have learned that while there is no ‘identikit’ sales
s whether the person
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person sell? A one-hour interview cannot possibly p
person we do know that successful ones have a
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reveal whether the person has the attributes and
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balance of ego and empathy. Ego to drive to hit their
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has the attributes and
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attitude for selling. g
goals and empathy to understand the customer’s
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point of view.
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The clever part is understanding the techniques
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needed to tease out these attributes from a
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candidate that may have little or no direct selling
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experience.
© 2008 Pareto Law

9. C
Chosen Few
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Proven Method The Chosen Few P
Productive From Da One day one
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The Pareto system for assessment, selection and
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From the thousands of applicants we receive
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placement of sales staff has been highly successful
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monthly we proactively telephone interview each one
o unprepared into the fray. They will first undergo
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because it replaces gut feeling with proven method.
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with a knowledge bank built up since 1995 to
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some of the most intensive sales training
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We have a dedicated team trawling the market for
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identify the top 20% potential who are then invited
o w programmes in Europe. The programme they
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the best graduate talent and then we apply
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to an assessment day. A combination of panel
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follow will teach them the high-level
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assessment and selection techniques that are both
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interviews, group dynamics, psychometric profiling
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communications skills to ensure they are
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rigorous and exhaustive. Indeed so much so that,
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and the now legendary three-minute presentation is
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for most companies it would not be economically
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aimed at ensuring that anyone who makes it through
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day they start work.
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viable to conduct the process in house. i
is right for the job, if a little exhausted by the end of
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the day. O
Over the next six to twelve months the employee is
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called back for further intensive training, based on
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practical experience within your company.
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© 2008 Pareto Law

11. Developing a Culture of Sales Success
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The Problem C
Completing the Mosaic
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Challenging Beliefs
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S
So much of your success depends on making the
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Alternatively there may be key parts missing from the W
Working with Pareto will be like working with no
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right recruitment decisions but we also believe that
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mosaic of skills that are holding them back such as
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other company. We willl challenge some entrenched
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organisations can build a culture of sales success
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selling over the phone or high level negotiation skills.
o l beliefs taking some of your people outside of their
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within their existing work force.
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comfort zone. But remember we base our claims on
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Increasingly clients are seeing the value of turning all
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This may mean retraining existing sales people to
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their staff into sales people whether it is their
o leading blue chip companies.
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overcome some of the negative beliefs they have
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primary job function or not. And this can be achieved
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acquired over the years or grafting a sales culture on
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by bespoke training programmes or a combination
o m If you would like to know more about or method and
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to individuals who shun the sales function through
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of public courses tailored to a given training needs
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lack of understanding or motivation.
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analysis. o
organisation please call 01625 255255 or email:
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info@paretolaw.co.uk or visit
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www.paretolaw.co.uk
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We base our claims on proven methodologies
that have worked for many leading blue chip
companies.
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This brochure is for information only and all business carried out by Pareto Law subject to and upon Pareto Law’s terms of business, a copy of which is available upon request.
ly u y s j a p u , c py p qu © 2008 Pareto Law

12. Pareto Law
Pareto House
Church Street
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 1AX
t 01625 255 255
f 01625 255 256
e info@pareto.co.uk
w www.pareto.co.uk