Business

Grow Your Business by Focusing on the Customers, Products, and Channels That Drive Results

Most businesses are not limited by a lack of effort but by a lack of focus. A small share of customers, products, channels and decisions usually generate most of the results – and most of the problems. That is the 80/20 Rule in business: roughly 20% of what you do creates about 80% of your revenue, profit, and momentum.

When you manage a company through this lens, you stop treating every initiative, client and metric as equal. Instead, you deliberately double‑down on the few levers that matter and simplify or cut the rest.

Where 80/20 Shows Up in Business

Across industries, you’ll see similar patterns:

• About 20% of customers often drive 80% of revenue or profit.
• Roughly 20% of products or services account for 80% of sales.
• A small share of cities or regions can generate most of your demand.
• Often, 20% of operational issues create 80% of the delays and complaints.

These proportions are not exact laws, but they are reliable enough to guide strategy. The key is to measure your own 80/20 patterns and act on them.

80/20 in Customers: Focus on Your Best Relationships

Not all customers are equally valuable. Some buy frequently, pay on time, and are easy to work with. Others demand constant discounts, create churn for your team, and may even cost you money.

• Identify the top 10–20% of customers who generate about 70–90% of your profit.
• Understand what they have in common (industry, size, use case, channel).
• Design your service levels, offers and roadmap with these customers in mind first.

Real-life example: A B2B SaaS company discovered that 18% of its accounts produced 82% of ARR. By focusing success, product and marketing around that segment, they grew faster with fewer support headaches – even as they pruned unprofitable customers.

8020 move: Export last year’s revenue by customer. Highlight the top 20% by revenue and by margin. Ask, “How can we retain and expand these relationships?” before worrying about the long tail.

80/20 in Products and Services: Double-Down on the Winners

Most portfolios are bloated. A few offers bring in most of the money, while many others consume marketing, support and inventory capacity without much return.

• Rank products by gross profit, not just revenue.
• Look for the 15–25% of SKUs that contribute most of your profit.
• Consider simplifying or sunsetting the consistently low-performing tail.

Real-life example: A retail business with 2,000 SKUs found that 300 of them generated 78% of gross profit. By improving stock levels, merchandising and marketing around those 300, and quietly shrinking the rest, they improved margins without needing more customers.

8020 move: Run a profitability analysis by product line. Choose one high‑performing line and ask, “How can we make this easier to buy, easier to find, or more compelling?”

80/20 in Marketing and Sales: Fewer, Better Channels

Marketing teams often spread themselves thin across many channels: SEO, paid search, social, events, partnerships, content, and more. In reality, a small number of channels typically bring most of the qualified pipeline.

• Attribute revenue and qualified leads back to channels and campaigns.
• Find the ~20% of channels that bring ~80% of sales‑ready opportunities.
• Reallocate budget away from consistently weak channels toward your proven winners or experiments.

Real-life example: A mid‑market software company realized that two channels – organic search and partner referrals – drove 76% of closed‑won revenue. Paid social consumed 30% of the budget but brought in little. Shifting that spend into content and partner enablement created more pipeline with less noise.

8020 move: For the last 6–12 months, chart opportunities and revenue by channel. Protect and optimize the top two or three; ruthlessly question whether the rest deserve the same attention.

80/20 in Operations: Fix the Few Bottlenecks Causing Most Pain

In most workflows, a few recurring issues are responsible for the majority of delays, rework, or customer complaints.

• Map your main value streams (lead → sale, order → delivery, ticket → resolution).
• Collect data on where work sits the longest or gets sent back most often.
• Choose 1–3 constraints to improve rather than tweaking every minor step.

Real-life example: A services firm found that 70% of project delays came from slow client approvals and unclear briefs – not from execution. By improving how they scoped and kicked off projects, work flowed faster without pushing the team harder.

8020 move: Ask your team, “If we could fix just two operational issues this quarter that would remove most of the friction, what would they be?” Start there.

80/20 in Leadership and Decision-Making

Leaders face dozens of decisions daily, but only a minority of those truly shape the company’s trajectory – things like strategy, key hires, major product bets and pricing.

• Separate high‑leverage decisions (hard to reverse, big impact) from low‑stakes ones.
• Spend more time clarifying and debating the former; streamline or delegate the latter.
• Review past years: which 3–5 decisions had outsized positive or negative impact? What patterns do you see?

Real-life example: A founder noticed that three decisions – market positioning, a key VP hire, and a major pricing change – had done more for growth than hundreds of minor optimizations. She began reserving more of her attention and calendar for similar “big levers.”

8020 move: Each quarter, list your top 5 decisions coming up. Block focused time to think and gather input on these, instead of letting them compete with day‑to‑day noise.

Building an 80/20 Business Culture

The highest‑performing teams internalize 80/20 thinking: they constantly ask, “What are the few things that matter most here?” You can encourage this by:

• Making impact, not activity, the core of performance conversations.
• Celebrating simplification – removing low‑value reports, meetings, and projects.
• Teaching team members to run their own 80/20 analyses on their work.

Over time, this creates a flywheel: people invest more time where it counts, results improve, and it becomes easier to say no to distractions.

Business will always be complex. The 80/20 Rule doesn’t remove that complexity, but it tells you where to look first. By focusing on the right 20% – your best customers, most profitable products, strongest channels and highest‑leverage decisions – you position your company to get far more from the same people, budget and time.