Enter the 40/50/x rule of inclusive speaking

A quick poll of communication professionals close to me suggests that a conservative return on speaking investment means that about 10% of audience members will consider buying into one of the many touchpoints we offer as follow-ups. These touchpoints vary from one speaker to another of course, and can include something as simple as connecting over social media, downloading our handout, subscribing to our mailing list, referring us to someone in a position to become our next client, hiring us for a future engagement, etc.

Basically, anything from turning a total stranger into a new social media follower, to your next raving fan, to your next qualified lead, to your next client, and everything in between.

How many people in any given audience of yours can become your next client and contribute to your revenue stream? Does 10% sound about right for your business as well?

Is your conversion rate a bit lower? A bit higher? Whatever that percentage is, recognizing that it is an important factor to identify lost opportunities is the first step toward addressing the impact exclusion has on your bottom line. While there are no absolutes around this, there are certain criteria we can use to estimate the extent of the damage lack of inclusion can cause to our business and to our brand.

My experience shows that it comes down to three key data points, summed up into one concept: the “40/50/x rule”, where:

• 40 stands for the percentage of your audience, at any given time, that is at significant risk of disengaging from you and your content due to inclusion issues or concerns,
• 50 stands for 50% of your audience at significant a risk of disengaging that you will ultimately lose to Fadeout Town, because of the barriers you raised in the way of their experience, and
• X stands for the lost opportunities from that segment of your audience that could have contributed to your revenue stream, but now won’t because they gave up on you.

If you are still reading this post, then I assume that you are buying into the idea that about half of the 40% of audience members at risk are likely to disengage from you due to inclusivity issues. With an audience of 100 people, that means 20 audience members on their way to Fadeout Town. With an audience of 500 people, then that’s 100 audience members. With an audience of 10,000 people, that’s a whopping 2,000 audience members. In every scenario, it comes to about 20% of your audience.

Therefore, for every dollar your speaking business generates, it’s fair to say that there’s an extra $0.20 on the dollar that you’ll be leaving on the table every time if you’re not actively factoring inclusion principles.

Assuming that your event generates an extra $10,000 in sales in future engagements, then we’re talking about a $2,000 in lost opportunities that also could have come from clients with disabilities, clients who were older, or others who just couldn’t truly connect with you and your message in the first place.

Multiply this by the number of people you reach through the events you speak or train at, the actual amount of money your business generates in the process, and quickly, that pile of cash stacks up a lot higher than you could ever imagine. Either way we look at it, since we’re talking about a 20% loss due to inclusion challenges, we’re talking about a 20% loss at every event, through every touchpoint, for every opportunity.

Measuring each client’s impact on your bottom line

In other words, as you lose 20% of your audience members to Fadeout Town, you’re also losing the revenue stream that could have come from them! Every time you walk up on stage, every time you step up in front of a room of people to deliver a presentation, every time they interact with your web presence.

If you know how much each new client is worth to your business on average, you can have a pretty good idea of how much you’re leaving on the table when you lose audience members to Fadeout Town. Routinely deliver presentations or training sessions this way year after year, and the amount of money you leave on the table can quickly add up to a mind-blowing figure of multiple hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars over the course of an entire career.

Of course, as is usually the case, your own mileage will vary and the numbers will change from one engagement to the next. And so will your conversion rate from audience members to clients. Your numbers will sometimes be higher and sometimes, they’ll be lower. But hopefully, through a rather simple demonstration, where roughly 20% of your revenue is lost due to lack of purposeful inclusion, you can start seeing what the numbers might look like for you and your own business.

So take a moment to ask yourself the following two questions:

• How many people are consuming your content on average each year?
• How much money are clients bringing into your business, on average?

Simply multiply the revenue generated by your clients and sales by 20% and you’ll get a pretty good idea of how much a lack of inclusion principles is costing your business each year.

And remember, this is just that 20% we KNOW who could have chosen to do business with you but decided against it. These people are still part of a larger group of 40% of people at significant risk of fading out who may not have considered becoming a direct client, but will still give up on us and our content because we’ve just made it too hard for them.

What if the conversion rate for your business is more like 15%? Or 20%? What if the PLB (People Left Behind) variable for your brand is higher than 20%? These are the kinds of thoughts that keep me up at night. Maybe it’ll have the same effect on you, moving forward?