Why your "stable" revenue just dropped off a cliff, and what to do about it
TL;DR: The way you speak to and show up for your audience, prospects and protagonists needs to shift.
Folks have been calling it a “rough” summer.
It’s being whispered about in private coffee chats and in sidebars just outside board rooms.
Most will say, “Oh, the economy is unstable, so folks are thrifty” and leave it at that.
That’s doing many of us a disservice.
If the issue were merely, “thriftiness” those drops in income wouldn’t be so difficult to stabilize.
But they are.
(I mean, if our governments are struggling, I think we can cut ourselves some slack)
It’s not just thriftiness.
Here’s what’s going on in 3 concrete points:
1) Brains
Economic instability is linked to unhealthy aging in the brain. More specifically, folks who’ve faced two or more drops in income of 25% or more scored 2.8% worse on tests designed to measure executive functioning [1]. That’s a pretty serious hit to our executive functioning. Here’s a quick primer on executive functioning; it’s responsible for key cognitive functions like:
Planning—that’s right, making plans
Cognitive control of behavior—our ability to control our behavior mentally
Attentional Control-our ability to actively chose what we pay attention to
Working Memory-where our relevant memories are held as we’re making a decision. See also: shortlist of candidates in a buying situation
Cognitive Flexibility- our ability to adapt our behavior and thinking in response to the enviornment around us. See also:
Metacognition- our ability to think about our own thoughts—like when you’re trying to evaluate a strategy you’ve come up with
Our ability to regulate stress
Our ability to debate—as in our ability to shift between actively listening and rationally defending our ideas
Our ability to empathize
Thinking Outside the Box.
And as it turns out, it’s not really about the size of the drops in income so much as the frequency with which those drops happen that contributes to this unhealthy aging in the brain.
On top of that, there’s evidence that the processing speed our brain operates at slows down too. And that suggests that the cognitive processes themselves are happening more slowly as well. Whew.
There’s also Attentional Overload, which I’ve spoken about else where before.
In the era of COVID, we’re overwhelmed by things we need to pay attention to because there’s so much content/noise. Not to speak of the hyperactive scanning for threats in our environments.
That means we have fewer attentional resources to go around.
The result? Hyperactive filters and an increased reliance on our instincts.
Now don’t take this to mean I’m on “just fix your scarcity mindset” train—because absolutely not [2]. Our instincts aren’t as negative as our society has made them out to be.
But that doesn’t mean our instincts don’t have problematic elements to them.
Take for example, visibility biases. The cognitive biases/learned brain chemistry that account for the ways we’ve been conditioned to overlook certain people and experiences.
In the final analysis, the times we’re in mean that underrecognized folks are even more likely to be overlooked. Because the resources we often use to combat these visiblity biases are more limited.
2) Stability ≠ equal security
For those of us who who were/ are in a more stable phase of our brand’s visibility and influence, there’s this common myth that can lull us into a false sense of security.
“I have an active audience and successful offerings. My brand is secure.”
Here’s the thing though: Those aren’t hallmarks of security. They’re hallmarks of stability. Security is stability across time. And the ability to remain hyperrelevant across time and contexts takes a level of understanding a lot of us haven’t bothered cultivating as far as our stakeholders are concerned.
Yup. That’s even with your super packed ideal client avatar (ICA)
(she prefers pink grapefruit seltzer)
Even though most of us (not I) have been sold on the virtues of niching and ICAs—business owners and marketing folks alike—one of the three key levels of understanding, as far as stakeholders are concerned, still managed to sneak up on us, bullhorn in hand.
The Environmental level.
3) You haven’t figured out your new (market) lens yet
One of the things a multifaceted environmental understanding of our stakeholders allows us to do is develop something I call a “market lens.” A Market lens gives you a pretty concrete overview of stakeholder sentiment as far as the economy is concerned. It’s not an objective assessment of the economy. It’s an evaluation of how stakeholders feel about the economic situation.
So far, I’ve identified three market lenses.
Flicking one of these on means you’ll know exactly how to show up when stakeholder sentiment changes. And that shift in the air? That drop in revenue? That’s what you’re picking up on: a shift in sentiment. More specifically, a mismatch between current stakeholder sentiment and the level of sentiment we’ve been speaking at up till now.
If your messaging and comms, etc were working until recently (something I know many of you have shared with me) that’s actually great news. It means, you have a pretty firm grasp on one of these three lenses or levels of sentiment.
You know how to communicate to a specific sentimental backdrop.
And that’s the secret.
Behavioral science is actually pretty clear about what brains and folks tend to focus on or find appealing in each of these environments.
That’s why these market lenses are so powerful.
And you my friend? All you’re looking to do is to learn how to navigate this new enviornment. Your challenge is creating a new market lens to match.
And for heavens sake, don’t turn to niching to fix this.
Niching actually just makes it worse.
[1]: https://n.neurology.org/content/93/20/e1890
[2]: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nwangwu_bias-brainscience-activity-6919619928392118272-BKy1?
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If you’re ready to articulate what you do in a way that attracts attention, interest and commitment (minus the guesswork) check out the brand new Market Lens Consult! And if you want to see these market lenses in action, make sure you check out this messaging experiment!