95:5 rule

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute finding that only ~5% of a category’s buyers are in-market in any given quarter — services buyers switch providers roughly every five years. The other ~95% are future buyers: marketing’s job with them is to be the remembered, trusted name when their moment arrives, not to convert them now. At WPH’s 80 named accounts, that means roughly 4 companies in-market per quarter, and you cannot know which 4.

Source: Prof. John Dawes, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, published with the LinkedIn B2B Institute (2021). The finding: up to 95% of category buyers are not in-market at any given moment, so “the brand that gets remembered is the brand that gets bought.”

First used in: 1.1 · How enterprise buyers buy