And thanks, as always, for the words of wisdom. As a small business marketing specialist and reformed copywriter, it’s been fascinating for me to watch this shift in the marketplace–especially with so many women starting small businesses.

It really is true that most women hate the hard sell. We just feel pushed and manipulated. But I’ve found both in my own business and with my clients that if you come from an authentic place of trying to help others (and you have a truly useful, quality product or service), women–and a whole lot of men–are going to be happy to buy.

Anyone still stuck trying to sell the old-fashioned way would be wise to read this article and take your advice to heart.

All the best,
Stacy

Stacy Karacostas
Practical Marketing Expert
http://www.success-stream.com

Thank you Steve for your kind words. They are appreciated

On a more positive note about car salespeople, they have evolved and some do give exceptional service.

I brought three cars from the same dealership plus referred many people to them as well. I know of a total of 10 in three years - positive word of mouth is much better a bad word or several.

Women can be hard to work with- let alone try to sell stuff too!

We are like cats - just when you think the cat is happy and purring as you give it a pat, it will turn around, hiss and bite you.

With the new way of Life Insurance and Investment Sales, that would be better than when I sold it 17 years ago.

Geez now I am showing my age

Best to all,

Susan Connors
Australia

This is wonderful. It’s wonderful in part because it proves what I’ve suspected all along. A lot of the world is CRAzYyyy! Especially men, old men who want the world to line up with their thinking and will go bankrupt or die trying to force the issue.

Susan Connors outsold everyone on the car lot and pissed off those old dirt bag thieves who wanted her to FAIL MISERABLY. Instead, they failed, and a young good looking woman who had never turned a wrench on a car engine did it to them.

Good on ya, Susan!

One sales article I read noted that women expect you to spend more time with them. If you say, “I’ll only take 10-minutes of your time” to a woman, she may feel slighted. This is as if to say, “You’re not worth more time to me.” If you say the same to a man, he thinks, “that’s good, I’m busy and don’t want to spend more than 10-minutes.” In fact you could be offering him an early wealthy retirement and he’ll still say, “You have 8-minutes and then I’m going to call the attack dog. What d’ ya got?”

Car salesmen are bad examples, because most of them are ill educated fools who are back on the car lot after they got out of jail for drunk driving, or some similar offense. They are not salesman, so much as snow job artists with a tail light guarantee. (When the tail lights disappear round the corner, that ends the guarantee.)

The in-home salesman has an interesting challenge. The Western world man always comes across as “the boss.” The truth is, “the woman is the boss” and if she isn’t present, or refuses to be present, or feels ignored, or doesn’t like the salesperson (either gender) there will not be a sale.

We can’t sit too close. We can’t look in her eyes too long. We must pay respectful attention, but we can’t push for a final decision too soon. We should be interesting, jocular, and charming, but not too charming. We should pray that the children won’t interrupt, but if they do treat them as God’s gift to humanity.

There’s good reason for paying sales people well. They put up with a lot of difficulty from very difficult people, and spend all of their lives trying to understand how to identify, work with, and motivate differing and often cantankerous personality types.

Ms. Connors, have you ever considered Life Insurance and Investment sales?

Kind regards for 2010,
SteveNewdell2009@yahoo.com

A great insight into the female persona (one of my kind).

There is a difference in men and women, how we buy, think, move, are motivated.

You give good insight into how people can learn to open their minds. See things from another persons perspective.

Often we are not taught how to think like the opposite sex.

In my earlier years of sales, everything was directed in a male form of selling.

This went against my grain - what I thought was right and I often ignored it - getting myself fired on occasion. At times I would stuff up as well so it went both ways.

Referring to cars, I used to sell New Toyota’s back in 1993 - 1995 in two dealerships.

I did the training, and started to out perform the other members of the team/s - being male. I was exposed to young and old ignorance. I was the top performer after a month and sold over 150,000 worth of vehicles. No small feet for a beginner back then.

After my final delivery - a gorgeous GXL Landcruiser with everything possible on it - I was taken into the office and fired.

I was flabbergasted! What? I was told I was incompetent and could not meet the quotas.

I have met a huge amount of bias over the years and the worst one was in 1996. Yet another story for another time

I love how marketers and copywriters are now going back to the way of selling I love. To people, for the people, not in your face at the people!

Well done Troy!

Plus I enjoyed reading the comments as well.

Happy New Year as well everyone!

Susan Connors
Land Downunder
Australia

Just like men, women have different criteria based on what they are trying to achieve in life. When buying clothes for herself, sure, a woman’s criteria is likely to be dis-similar from man’s - but when dealing with women business owners I’ve found that while many have been less oppositional than men in negotiations, women don’t make decisions based on “female” criteria.

I’ve found people under pressure to make a decision - for example a decision to hire a freelancer to move their business forward - approach the process based more on personality makeup, past experiences, and the way they see themselves as confident or not-confident, or informed or non-informed decision-makers more than any sort of gender-biases.

Some people are non-aggressive decision makers who take their time and look at the decision from many angles, careful weighing their options. They take their time getting informed, perhaps because they are not confident in their abilities to make a good decision. Others are aggressive, fast decision makers who quickly isolate their most important criteria. This is true for both men and women - it is linked to personality makeup, in my experience, more than gender.

A useful model for the way people, regardless of gender, make decisions and behave in selling/buying situations is the 4-quadrant model. It is based on an ancient Greek teaching. You have the aggressive, the non-aggressive, the emotional and the non-emotional decision makers. People are aggressive/emotional, aggressive/non-emotional, non-aggressive/emotional, or non-aggressive/non-emotional in their behavior.

By the old cliched model those dumb car salesmen were going by they assumed the women were non-aggressive/emotional decision makers who would waste their time (non-aggressive) and then might even be frivolous (emotional) shoppers who were shopping on emotion without the power to spend the money. Because women these days control so much of the money, something like 70%, even though they earn less than half in most households - the idea that they lack the power to spend it is absurd.

Where male salespeople (and marketers) may be making errors is in only selling to their own personal criteria - selling in this way isn’t a gender-ignorant selling situation - it’s a personality-type ignorance situation.

It may be true that more men tend to be aggressive/non-emotional decision makers, it’s not true that all women are not. Men, in many decisions, tend to be more ego-driven and emotional than women. I’ve found women to be pragmatic, open-minded decision makers in purchasing custom work or services. That doesn’t mean I want to go underwear shopping with my partner. Her style of shopping for clothes tires me - but on the other hand I could spend hours fooling around with guitars in a music store and she would be pretty bored with it because she doesn’t play - just as I do not wear lingerie.

People - not male people or female people - people make decisions on individual criteria. As more women move into male roles (head of household, for instance) they are making decisions that once fell predominantly to men - and I think you’ll find that women can be as rational as men in making decisions and to generalize WOMEN as one big group of mysterious people is as big a mistake as not even acknowledging they have different criteria opposed to me.

Of course in some market segments women are making practically ALL the decisions - lets say selecting the refrigerator, while in other areas - say choosing the new TV, men are making the decisions. Who makes these decisions is often a matter of who in the household is interested in making them.

I could go on - but this is a lengthy reply to a complex subject. In short, I agree that women are making a lot of buying decisions, but I don’t agree with blanket generalizations about women’s decision making criteria.

Came right in time for my new product
launch and I’m already realizing that
I didn’t address more hidden benefits
to my female buyers.

C.

Leslie Ehrin