Measuring the hidden costs of exclusion

In a recent post, we talked about the fact that as a professional communicator, you might be leaving some serious money on the table when you fail to pay attention to inclusion principles when sharing your thoughts and ideas with your audience. Let’s go one step further today, and analyze just how much money we might be talking about.

If you’ve been following our conversation, you’re probably starting to realize that a lack of inclusion can quickly lead to lost opportunities and sales, hurt feelings, resentment, and negative reviews from a significant portion of your audience. If you ignore or dismiss audience members who have disabilities, are getting older, or are potentially marginalized by the way that you use technology, you consequently leave out a considerable portion of your potential customer base that controls billions of dollars annually. That just can’t be good for business.

We know that between 20% of working-age Canadians self-identify as having one or more disabilities and that over 19% of Canadian seniors will also experience age-related sensory issues. What this means is that at any given time, you can expect close to 40% of your audience to be at risk of facing a variety of accessibility challenges. Avoiding or mitigating those issues will require you to put in the extra work to meet their needs and expectations. Ignoring these cumulative demographics can ultimately cost your business in many ways… lost leads, lost sales, and of course, lost revenue. The consequences of these losses add up quickly!

You might also remember our previous conversation about the disability market, which is made up of people with disabilities and the friends and families who care about them. Rich Donovan, the author of Unleash Different, estimates this market to reach about 53% of all consumers. That’s another significant factor to consider.

If a part of your audience leaves your session feeling cheated, excluded, or denied, and they speak of their experiences to people who care about them, do you expect any of those folks to reach out to you to discuss future opportunities? I would not exactly hold my breath on that one.

The cost of clueless exclusion

Picture yourself speaking in front of an audience of 200 people; we already know, based on statistics, that roughly 40% of the audience (about 80 people) will potentially be at high risk of exclusion for various reasons if you fail to deliver your content in a truly inclusive way. These are the folks likely to take the dreaded exit ramp to Fadeout Town.

But all hope is not lost, however, as research shows that about half of those audience members at risk will still be stubborn or resourceful enough to figure out ways to take something of value away from your inaccessible content. They’ll put in twice the effort and do their best to stick it out despite the frustrations they might feel or the challenges they might face, still putting you at risk of losing them as a prospective client. So even if they make it through, can you really afford to keep alienating and excluding those who have the makings of becoming potential buyers?

The other half, or 40 people, will likely just give up because you’ve made it too hard or too frustrating for them. These are the ones you will lose forever, as they grab their one-way ticket to Fadeout Town. They’re the ones you want to be very careful about, as they represent the 20% of irreducibles that will make up any given audience.

They’re the ones you will have no chance of gaining as customers unless you care for them with an inclusive delivery of your content. They’re the ones who are likely to speak negatively of you and ruin your chance to tap into the untapped and underserved disability market. They’re the ones who will relate their experience with you to past speakers with whom they have felt disregarded and will put you in the category of speakers who just don’t care.

That is not a label you want to be wearing. The negative word will spread that you are not an inclusive communication professional and your business can’t afford to be associated with that category. No matter how good you think your message or product might be.

So how much money are you leaving on the table with that elusive 20%? It’s easy enough to calculate. How much revenue did your business generate last year? Take 20% of that, based on these audience members who ruled you out, and this is roughly how much you potentially leave on the table by not being as inclusive as you should be.

If you ran a $250k speaking business last year, then you probably left about $50k in missed opportunities and lost leads on the table. Your revenue could have been closer to $300k if accessibility had been on your radar. If you ran a $500k business, then it’s about $100k that you lost because you failed to deliver your content in a truly inclusive way.