What Revenue Managers can learn from electric wiring

Plenty.

The Setup:

• 40 year old house
• Downstairs switch? Worked like a charm.
• Upstairs switch? Dead.
• All switches "born" 40 years ago.
• The goal? Replace and control both lights, or at least the upstairs one, from the upstairs switch.

I had all the wires in front of me: Black A. Black B. Black C. One brown wire that clearly had to be the key. I started testing every single combo like a mad electrician in a logic puzzle. Always going up and down to the fuse-box.

But nothing worked.

And Then It Hit Me

I was so focused on getting power from the top, I never considered that the actual live source was the socket downstairs.

The switch wasn’t broken. The wires weren’t wrong. I was just trying to pull power from a data set that didn’t have any current.

The Data Analogy

This is exactly what we do in revenue and commercial strategy.

You’re sitting there with:

• Reviews
• Website conversion
• Pickup
• PMS data
• Rate shoppers
• Segments
• Channel mix
• Pace information

But unless you wire them correctly, and connect Live to the right point, nothing lights up.

Not All Data is Live

Just because the data is “there” doesn’t mean it’s doing anything.

• You might be looking at website traffic… but the power’s in the price elasticity.
• You might be reporting pickup… but the real switch is in lead time + segment blend.
• You might be trying to drive conversion from the top (ads, meta), when the power is sitting at the socket (guest experience, review loop, upsell execution).

The Lesson

It’s not about having all the data. It’s about knowing which wire does what, and what to connect it to.

I tried connecting every wire to every terminal, just like we try connecting every dashboard to every KPI, and it didn’t work. The moment I understood where the Live actually comes from, the circuit clicked.

The really annoying this is that I should have known from the get go:

Tested the socket. Live current. The socket had the power line, then a bridge to the switch, then the switch to the lamp and travellers to the top and then at the top travellers to the lamp, live in from downstairs, then another traveller downstairs - that I know now, doesn't actually go anywhere.

Point here is: I was the one looking at it from the wrong angle.

TL;DR:

Revenue strategy is just like wiring a switch:

• You’ve got lots of wires (data sets)
• Only one of them brings Live power
• The others are pointless unless they’re connected in the right constellation

You don’t need more data. You need connected data ... and to stop assuming power flows from the top.

Love, Fabi