Imagine you are the owner of a small, entrepreneurial start-up. You feel stretched to the snapping point by the demands of your various customers. Trying to keep everyone happy, you have never really prioritized your customer relationships.

Apply Pareto's Law to the following dataset of your customers.

Which customers are your "A," "B," and "C" customers?

Why did you decide to draw the dividing lines where you did?

Under what circumstances would you consider promoting a "C" customer to a higher classification?

Why might you demote an "A" customer to a lower classification?

	Customer	Sales
1	Abbott Laboratories	$100,400
2	Actavis Inc.	$548,800
3	Agilent	$19,600
4	Allergan Inc.	$29,570
5	Amgen Inc.	$165
6	Baxter International	$4,373
7	BIOGEN IDEC Inc.	$2,291,000
8	Bristol-Myers Squibb	$25,910
9	Carefusion	$27,110
10	Cerner	$83,740
11	Covidien plc	$281,400
12	Dentsply International	$1,467
13	Express Scripts	$79,970
14	Gilead Sciences	$12,370
15	Humana Inc.	$6,256
16	Johnson & Johnson	$38,420
17	Life Technologies	$198,800
18	McKesson Corp.	$1,237,000
19	Merck & Co.	$242,500
20	Patterson Companies	$4,076
21	Perrigo	$1,863,000
22	Quest Diagnostics	$4,704,000
23	St Jude Medical	$39,290
24	Tenet Healthcare	$77,140
25	United Health Group	$40,000
26	Waters Corporation	$13,590
27	Zimmer Holdings	$13,500