Lies, damn lies and statistics

As an avid follower on LinkedIn I was following (and participating) on a discussion concerning what percentage of target should we expect sales people to achieve. One of the contributors, from a well known sales methodology and training company, excitingly told us that "in our annual sales performance study we have consistently found that 78% - 80% of your revenue comes from 20%- 22% of sales reps"!

Now it doesn't take a genius to recognise that Pareto's law (80:20) drives our lives and that there must be better things to do than spend money on a survey that states the obvious. Perhaps we should conduct a survey of surveys to find out that 80% of surveys tell us what we already knew and 20% are just made up stats.

Isn't it about time consultants stopped trying to be clever and instead tried to help their clients help themselves!

By the way can anyone tell me the time as I have a client who needs to know the time........