Myth Busting

Myth: "Only 3% of your market is buying right now" — a good idea with a borrowed number

• No invented stats
• Written for UK readers
• 4 min read
• Published 25 September 2026

The buyer pyramid is one of the most shared diagrams in sales and marketing. At the top, 3% of your market is buying now. Below them, 7% are open to it. The remaining 90% split into three equal bands: not thinking about it, thinking they are not interested, and definitely not interested. You will find it in agency pitches, LinkedIn carousels and plenty of sales training.

It is a useful picture, and the idea behind it is sound. But people quote the 3% as if someone measured it. If they didn't, then any plan built on "3% of our list will buy this quarter" is built on a guess.

Where the claim comes from

The pyramid is credited to Chet Holmes, the American sales trainer, and appears in his book The Ultimate Sales Machine. The book was first published in 2007, and his company later released a new edition with a reworked "inverted" version of the pyramid. His company's website still teaches the original bands: 3% buying now, 7% open, then three groups of 30% (Chet Holmes International).

What we could actually find

We looked for the research behind the percentages: a survey, a sample, a date, a method. On the Chet Holmes International page that sets out the pyramid, we found the figures presented without any citation.

The only explanation of where the 3% came from that we found is on another page of the same company's site. It says Holmes polled audiences "by the thousands" at his live events, asking for a show of hands from anyone in the market for things like tyres, cars, home remodelling, carpeting or technology. It says he found that, "across the boards", only 3% of any market was in buying mode (Chet Holmes International).

That is an interesting observation, and it may well have held up well enough in the rooms where Holmes asked. But it has clear limits:

• No published data. We couldn't find a sample size, dates, a list of categories or results by category. We weren't able to check the book's text ourselves, so we can't rule out a fuller explanation there, but none of the summaries and explainers we found cite one.
• The audience wasn't the market. People at a sales seminar are not a random sample of anyone's buyers.
• The examples were mostly consumer purchases. Tyres and carpets are bought on very different cycles from payroll software or a legal adviser.
• The lower bands look like a round split. The three bands of 30% are neat thirds of the remaining 90%. We found no suggestion that they were measured separately.

So the verdict is unsourced. We couldn't trace the 3% to published research; the earliest explanation we found is a description of informal polls at Holmes's own events. That is not the same as made up, and Holmes may have been reporting honestly what he saw. But it isn't a statistic you can rely on for your market.

What the evidence does support

The principle behind the pyramid has much better support than the number. Only a small share of potential buyers are in the market at any one time, because most things are bought on a cycle.

The clearest version comes from John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, in what he calls the 95:5 rule. His reasoning is arithmetic, not a survey: if companies change a supplier such as their main bank or law firm about once every five years, then about 20% are in the market in a given year and around 5% in a given quarter. So roughly 95% are not buying right now (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute).

Dawes is careful about this. He says the 95% is not meant to be a precise rule but a heuristic to get the idea across. He also shows how it moves: for a category bought every two years on average, around 13% of buyers would be in the market in any quarter (John Dawes, 2021).

That is the key difference from the pyramid. Dawes gives you a method you can apply to your own buying cycle. The 3% gives you a number that is meant to apply to every market at once.

What to do instead

Keep the insight, drop the fixed percentage, and work out a rough figure for your own market.

1. Estimate how often your customers buy. Contract lengths, renewal dates and how long clients typically stay with a supplier all give you a buying cycle. Divide the number of periods you plan in by that cycle for a rough in-market share. For example, on a three-year cycle, about a third of accounts are in the market in a given year, or around 8% in a quarter. That is our worked example, not a benchmark.
2. Size your list with that number. If you have 400 target accounts and roughly 8% are in the market this quarter, about 32 might be actively looking. That tells you whether your pipeline target is realistic. Our guide to building a prospect list covers how to get the list right in the first place.
3. Stay in touch with the rest. The people who aren't buying now will be later. Useful, low-pressure contact over months keeps you in mind for when they are. Our piece on when "no" means "not yet" covers how to handle that without nagging.
4. Track who actually buys. After a year, compare how many accounts on your list entered a buying process with your estimate. Your own data beats any pyramid.

Sources we checked

• Chet Holmes International, "Lessons from the Inverted Buyer's Pyramid" — sets out the 3/7/30/30/30 bands without citing a source.
• Chet Holmes International, "The Art of Attracting New Buyers" — the only origin we found: show-of-hands polls at Holmes's live events.
• Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, "95% of B2B buyers are not in the market for your products" — Dawes's reasoning from a five-year switching cycle.
• John Dawes, "The 95:5 Rule" (2021) — explains it is a heuristic and shows how the share changes with the buying cycle.

Spotted a mistake or a number we can't back up? Tell us and we'll fix it.