Reversing the Death Spiral of Negativity

By Sanya Weathers

Reversing a death spiral requires knowing how you’ve gotten into one in the first place. If the tone your customers are taking in public is just getting worse and worse, here are some questions to ask yourself. The answers will help you find out what you’re doing wrong:

Is there really a problem? Cross reference your feedback with your numbers. If your numbers are climbing, then the problem is with the tone of your community. Common causes of bad tone are letting the positive people get shouted down as “brown nosers” while allowing the negative people unfettered access to moan, allowing your moderators to be too snarky, not expressing your appreciation, and not letting customers know you’re listening. These are things you can fix with immediate results.

Are you making too many excuses? This is more of an internal thing. If you find yourself saying things like “oh, the numbers always drop in the summer” or “everyone in this market category experiences churn,” stop and check yourself. Numbers do usually drop in the summer, but the percentage is small. What you need to be watching is the percentage difference from one summer to the next. Churn is also one of those things that comes with the territory, so what you’re looking for are trends. Finally, certain trends may be standard for your industry, but so what? If you lean on that crutch too often, you’re never going to have success beyond what is standard in your field. Stop making excuses and start looking for root causes to address.

Are you externalizing blame? Lately I hear a lot of companies blaming the economy for everything, like we’re all at the mercy of this terrible external monster we can’t control. The economy is a factor, and when the economy is bad it behooves you to be conservative with your growth estimates. But the seemingly endless recession is not the reason you’re not succeeding. Do you want to waste time fretting about , or do you want to make the very best product you can make, get the customers you can get… and position yourself to take advantage of the good times when they roll around again?

Are you proactive or reactive? If all you’re ever doing is lurching from crisis to crisis, or running around slapping spackle on the cracks as they form, customers will notice. Reactive management is always responding to something negative – and there will always be more negativity. When it feeds on itself, you get the death spiral.

To break free, you need to do something proactive every day. Reach out to a client. Write an article for a trade journal that isn’t a post mortem. Throw a party. Solve a problem nobody has. If you really can’t think of anything, look at the product modding community and hire one of them to have ideas for you. But whatever you do, strike out in a new direction and go to a place no one’s talking about yet.

Nothing breeds negativity like negativity… but nothing breeds success like success. And it’s never too late to start fresh.