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For years, I’ve managed salespeople and sales managers. Over two decades later, now an author and Executive Sales Coach™, the one resonating philosophy I hear when speaking with managers that is still alive and well is the 80-20 rule.

Here’s what the 80-20 Rule implies: 20 percent of your sales team will be responsible for roughly 80 percent of your sales volume or achieving productivity goals within a collaborative team environment.

Considering the vast resources and growing number of professionally trained, certified business coaches available to assist managers and owners in developing a high-performance team, this culture seems a bit antiquated; one that should have gone by the wayside like pagers did once mobile phones became easily available.

How can this rule still exist and proliferate today? Granted, I know many companies where this philosophy no longer applies. But what about the population of companies that still breed this culture?

“That’s just how it is in my business” is the most common response I hear. After all, when something is always going on, we either accept it or become blind to it. Companies continue to surrender to this belief and rather than challenge it, they work around it. This toxic myth has become so engrained that their entire recruiting strategy has been developed around this core principle.