(This is the first in a series of articles on Sales Force Readiness and Gender Differences)

Marketing gets it.  Advertising gets it.  But most sales departments don’t have a clue!  I have heard versions of the following story at least ten times, and it certainly bears repeating. A female customer walks in the door to buy a car. Let’s say it’s a Volvo.  Looks like easy pickings for a salesperson, right?  Not today.  That woman has already seen hundreds of Volvo marketing products in every media (TV, radio, magazines, newspapers) and heard about, read and seen every single safety and comfort feature.

She has gone onto the Internet and checked out the Volvo websites. She has gotten background information including the location of available dealers and the cars in stock.  She has spoken to friends who bought Volvos. And, thanks to the Internet, she has even figured out what the car should cost within a few hundred dollars. Volvo’s Marketing Division has done its job.  She knows more about the car than the salesman who greets her at the door.  But how is she treated?  As if she has a low IQ, is slightly hard of hearing, and really has no right buying a luxury car; however, if she brought a male friend with her to the dealer, chances are the clueless salesperson spent most of his time talking to him.

Now I know what you’re thinking. This could never happen in my company. I don’t have ‘used car salesmen’ working for me. I’ve given my sales staff all of the technical training they need. We spent millions of dollars installing the latest Customer Management Systems to track & monitor orders to make customers happy. We have processes in place to track virtually everything in our supply chain.

The truth is sales has not changed a lot in the last 50 years. While processes have become automated, sales is still about a salesperson ‘selling something’ to a buyer. Well, here’s what’s different today, and you’ll probably find it overwhelming.
US Women buy or influence over 85% of the consumer purchases in this country including,
•    Financial Services 89%
•    Houses 91%
•    Automobiles 90%
•    Consumer Electronics 51%
•    Health Care 80%

If you sell in a B to C (Business to Consumer), world today THE BUYER IS WOMAN. The numbers are clear. And herein lies the challenge.

Most salespeople are MEN. Men today make up over 80% of sales positions and over 90% of Sales Management. The problem for most salespeople is that they have never been trained to think about (let alone sell to) the buyer’s gender. Yet given the data, in almost 80% of sales situation between a Salesperson (Male 80% of the time) and a Buyer (Female 80% of the time) there is a gender difference. In fact the most significant variable in every sales situation is the gender of the buyer, and, more importantly, how the salesperson communicates to the buyer’s gender.

If gender differences are present in the workplace and marketplace then they are certainly present in every sales transaction. Hundreds of books have been written that men and women are different, yet no one has told this to our companies’ Chief Revenue Producers (i.e. Salesmen).

In the words of business guru Tom Peters, “Woman are the primary purchasers of … damn near everything. We must therefore strive to achieve nothing less than total enterprise realignment around this awesome, burgeoning, astoundingly untapped market!” Not a bad idea. Tom also advocates that companies fire all of their salesmen and hire just saleswomen (and while I agree with this, we will revisit it in another column).

If you aren’t ready to realign your entire organization, here are some other immediate actions you need to take today:

•    Bring women into the conversation. Whether it is a focus group of your consumers or the Women’s Affinity Group in your company. Have them in the room to discuss what is important to them regarding your company and its products. Have them talk to your salespeople about how they use and interact with your products.
•    Have a joint meeting with your marketing staff and your salespeople. Have your marketers discuss how they are viewing women as consumers. Have them discuss how your products uniquely connect to them to their lives and values. If you had successful women’s initiatives find out why they worked. Have your sales team talk about what they are hearing from their buyers.
•    Meet with your Sales Management team and document what your customer looks like today: Race, Gender, Family Status, Personal Interests (chances are your customer looks and acts a lot different than they did just 10 years ago). Have them discuss their top buying situations. Then discuss gender issues that might be present. Do some role plays with Men selling to Women. At first this will be very challenging and, yes, stereotypes will be present. Work through them and get to the core of who your buyer is and what they want.
•    Get back out in the marketplace and talk one-on-one to your customers. If you haven’t been out with your sales team in some time you will be amazed at how the face (and gender) of the buyer has changed. Ask them how they see their consumers changing and how what plans they have to reach more women.
•    Finally, ask yourself if your company has done everything it can to prepare its sales force to meet the changing dynamics of a younger, more female, more multicultural customer that they will be calling on in the not-so-distant future.

Have a sales question for Jeffery? Submit any questions you have so that Jeffery can answer them in his next article to BusinessManager@w2wlink.com.

Written for w2wlink.com by Jeffery Tobias Halter.