Unlocking Global Sales Excellence

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Using The Pareto Principle

By Kevin Hunter

August 14, 2025

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The Pareto Chart is a proven method for revealing the ‘vital few’ factors driving most results. At America’s largest insurance company, it uncovered that 20% of salespeople were generating 80% of sales revenue. By segmenting our team into the top 20%, middle 60%, and bottom 20%, we could zero in on moving the middle 60 closer to top-tier performance—unlocking more than $1 billion in annual revenue potential and $300 million in incremental earnings for our people and their families worldwide.

We paired this analysis with a process map of the full sales cycle. High-level stages—Lead, Qualify, Propose, Close, and Onboard—formed the horizontal flow. Down the side, major process categories revealed every action required to progress a sale. By mapping these visually, we identified and removed steps that added no value, like manual re-entry and duplicate approvals, freeing more time for customer engagement.

Finally, we applied Pareto to our sales tools. Two emerged as vital: our CRM platform and automated proposal generator, together producing 80% of positive outcomes. By concentrating training and adoption around these tools, we amplified productivity, improved consistency, and built a repeatable path to top-quartile performance—an approach that can be replicated by sales organizations globally.

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— Kevin

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