Count to half

The number of customers, largest first, needed to reach half of revenue. The customer concentration measure a sales leader can act on: it is how many relationships carry the business.

DefinitionThe number of customers, largest first, needed to reach half of revenue. The customer concentration measure a sales leader can act on: it is how many relationships carry the business.

Trend it

Thirteen last year, nine this year, on higher revenue: four fewer relationships carry half the company.

Per rep

A count to half of one is a rep whose number is a single customer.

How it is computed

Customers are ranked by revenue and counted from the largest until cumulative revenue reaches half of the total.

Example

A distributor with 1,580 customers reaches half its revenue at customer 47. A year ago it took 58. The base is concentrating.

Where it goes wrong

Reported once. The figure is only useful as a trend, because it moves when a top-ten ratio does not.

Articles that use this term

AI and self-service analytics

A weekly sales digest worth reading: what a good one looks like, line by line

An annotated example of a weekly sales digest built from computed tables: the header that states the period and the checks, ten movements each with the measure, the level, the change, the threshold and the citation, the three lists that follow, untouched, slipped and dormant, the line that says what did not move, and the footer with the definition version. What each element is for, and the version of the same digest that nobody reads.

16 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting

Concentration by industry: where a large top-ten share is normal, and where it is risk

Concentration is measured the same way everywhere, top-n share, count to half, the index, and what a high figure means depends on the desk: normal in a category with a few large buyers, a dependency in one with many. This hub gives, for twelve industries, what is concentrated, on which axis, what a typical top-ten share looks like, when it is a strength and when it is a risk, and the guide for each.

16 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting

Concentration on ten customers: the whole arithmetic on one page

The complete customer concentration calculation on ten customers small enough to check by hand: the revenue per customer, the sorted shares, top-one, top-three and top-five share, the count to half, the Herfindahl index as the sum of squared shares, the same measures last year for the trend, the per-rep split that shows a rep whose count to half is one, and the identity, so a reader can reproduce every figure and then run it on their own export.

16 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting

Count-weighted and value-weighted: why every ratio on this site says which

The difference between a ratio weighted by count, accounts, deals, inquiries, and one weighted by value, revenue, notional, premium, why the two disagree whenever the large items behave differently from the small ones, the six measures where the difference is largest, hit ratio, coverage, win rate, share of wallet, renewal rate and retention, the rule that a report shows both and ranks by value, and the case where count is the honest one.

16 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting

Customer concentration: how to measure it and what the number means

Three ways to measure customer concentration from a revenue ledger, top-n share, the Herfindahl index and the count to half, what each is good for, a worked example, why the measure is reported per segment and per rep as well as for the company, and how to tell healthy concentration from dependency.

16 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting

How to read a concentration table: the trend column, and the per-rep view most readers skip

A reading guide for a customer concentration table: why the level of the top-ten share is the least informative column, the trend as the first read, the count-to-half as the second, the customer detail behind the top ten, contract, sites, contacts, as the third, and the per-rep and per-segment views that a company-level table hides, with the two rows to open, the customer that rose fastest and the rep whose count to half is one.

16 Sept 20263 min read