The 95-5 rule is the finding, from Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute in work published with the LinkedIn B2B Institute, that in a typical B2B category only about 5 percent of buyers are in the market at any one time, while the other 95 percent are not ready today.
The 95-5 rule is the reason a readiness axis exists at all. Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, in work published with the LinkedIn B2B Institute, put a number on it: in a typical B2B category only about 5 percent of buyers are in the market at any one time, because companies change providers roughly once every five years. Ninety-five percent are not ready today. A motion that speaks only to the in-market 5 percent is fighting over the smallest slice of the room.
That work is right. Most accounts are not ready, so build mental availability for the day they are. In the Demand Compass the rule cuts both ways. Reach an account in the small slice when it is buying, and you are relevant. Reach it during the other ninety-five percent, and you are spam, no matter how good the message. So the readiness axis does not find who fits; it finds who fits and is moving now. The awareness axis is where the other ninety-five percent live, being developed for later.
The Compass operationalizes both halves. It measures which five percent is moving right now, detected as a composite of signals and kept honest by decay, and it measures the awareness you are building in the other ninety-five percent so you can prove it pays off. Mental availability is the strategy; the Compass is the instrument. The mistake is to hear the rule as permission to ignore the five percent, or as permission to pitch the ninety-five. It is neither. It is the map of how much of your market needs which move.
From The Demand Compass, by David Moreira and Marcos Stubrin. All terms · The book
