This well known principle holds that 80 percent of your outcomes come from 20 percent of your inputs.  In practice, the concept of focusing on a few options that provide the greatest benefit is applied to management (defects, staff, project management, etc.), economics (wealth distribution), information architecture and marketing. 

Here are questions to ask yourself as a small business owner / operator or marketing professional.

1. Which key (20 percent) customers and key products or product lines generate 80 percent of your revenue?
2. Which few sales staff or employees are responsible for the majority of your revenue?
3. When you’re seeking new customers, do 20 percent of those also generate 80 percent of your new revenue?
4. Which 20 percent of your customers or products generate 80 percent of your complaints?
5. When it comes to marketing,  are you focusing roughly 80 percent of your time and energy on the 20 percent of your work that’s really important?

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.