The 95:5 rule — most of your market isn't buying right now
According to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, up to 95% of business buyers are out of market at any given moment. The winner is whoever they recall when they enter it.
Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, the most cited marketing research centre of our time, popularised a simple rule: at any given moment, roughly 95% of business customers are out of market. Not buying, not comparing, not dealing with it. Only the remaining few percent are buying — and every supplier is fighting over exactly those.
You're selling to people who won't buy now
The uncomfortable conclusion: most of your contacts, meetings and conversations happen with people who won't buy now — and that's fine. The mistake isn't talking to them. The mistake is measuring every conversation by its immediate result and discarding contacts “with no potential.” Those people aren't out of the game. Their match just hasn't started yet.
The game is won in memory
Ehrenberg-Bass concludes that marketing works mainly for the future: it builds the memory that surfaces when the customer enters the market — they call it mental availability. Big brands buy it with advertising. A small company has a cheaper tool: being politely, usefully present over time. A touch two or three times a year — about something, not “just because” — does more for a future deal than a perfect quote sent on a day the customer wasn't buying.
The move from 95 to 5 is silent
The most important part of the whole rule: the move from the 95 to the 5 percent isn't announced. A machine breaks, a supplier leaves, a budget gets approved — and the customer is choosing within a week. At that moment they don't call the best vendor on the market. They call the one they remember and have a contact for. Often it's simply the one who reached out in September.
What to take away
Stop dividing your database into “live” and “dead.” Divide it into now and later — and for “later,” have a rhythm: when, whom, with what useful thing. That's not pestering. That's waiting for the match with your jersey on.
A rhythm for “later” is exactly what reminders with a reason hold in Lemnio — even for next September. Start free, or write to [email protected].