FIVE WAYS TO CLOSE MORE SALES WITH WOMEN
Ask Yourself:
1 Based on your experiences, what do you think describes the sales process a woman is looking for?
2 What percentage of sales would you guess are influenced by women?
3 A woman walks into your office or store wearing sweatpants and a torn T-shirt, and has three kids in tow. What’s your gut response?
4 True or false: with a woman, you’ve got a better chance of convincing her to buy if you emphasize the “soft” benefits of your product rather than the “hard” details of how your product compares to the competition.
5 What is it about your products or services that make them attractive to women? Is your product so strong that women will buy it regardless of who is selling it?
6 Women like to talk during the sales process. So when you’re selling to a woman, what types of things do you talk about to get her to feel comfortable? The weather? Your kids? Other customers? Personal information from your life? Or just the product?
7 Think about the last time you weren’t able to close a sale with a female customer. What do you think were the exact reasons the sale fell through?
When you’ve finished reading this chapter, think about these questions again and see whether your answers are different.
NOW, let’s get down to it!
If you’re a man, I bet you’re thinking that this chapter alone could be worth the price of the book—and you might just be right. Figuring out what women (and men) WANT has been an interesting project of mine for decades! The good news is that there are definitely specific keys to understanding both men and women that will help you be more successful during the sales process.
If you’re a woman, you probably know what women want in a PERSONAL relationship, but you may not have a CLUE as to what they want as BUYERS. Sure, you’ve BEEN a BUYER, so you’ve got this, RIGHT? But let me ask you something: have you ever STEPPED BACK during a shopping experience and ANALYZED how and why you did what you did? It’s hard to SEPARATE your personal experiences into general rules without talking to lots of other women about what they look for when they’re buying. But if you take all that information and boil it down to the BOTTOM LINE, you come up with one of the most important differences between selling to men and selling to women…
With a man, you can concentrateon closing the sale. With a woman,you had better concentrate onCOMMITTING to the relationshipbefore concentrating on the sale.
With her, it is critical that you COMMIT to the entire sales process, rather than focusing on just the end result. Remember, women are more about the experience, and men are more about the results.
In other words, the typical aggressive sales techniques that have been the core and mainstay of sales training for decades will probably turn her off, which will then turn her away from you!
So are you ready to enter the fascinating and often complex mind of a female shopper? Then let’s start with some great news.
Most books on selling to women spend at least the first chapter or two 1) giving you case study after case study of companies that learned the hard way that they had to advertise, market, and sell differently to women, and 2) offering lots of statistics, charts, and graphs supporting right and left-brain theories of communication, the history of gender differences, and the growth of women’s purchasing power.
So after the first hour of reading, do you have even one single thing you can use tomorrow to help you make more money and be more successful? Since I trust that you are smart and already know that women are critical to the success of your business or career, I thought you might like me to sum up all of that information in a few sentences. Then we can get right down to the business of helping you commit to and close more deals, make more money, and acquire the tools necessary to give your customers exactly what they want!
We can begin by eliminating at least twenty pages of statistics, numbers, data, and research. There is only one statistic you really need to know, so let’s repeat it one more time:
85 percent of all consumer buyingdecisions are made or influenced byWOMEN.
How’s THAT for a STAT? No other statistic is necessary in order for you to be motivated, inspired, and determined to do what it takes to dramatically increase your “Sales to Women” percentage. Women are either buying for themselves, buying for someone else, or telling someone else what to buy; 85 percent of the time something gets sold! WOW! Now you can begin to understand why this book is so vitally important to your future success in sales.
So here’s the inside scoop: since women are usually the EXPERIENCE buyers, they are mentally critiquing each stage of the process and constantly evaluating whether to STAY IN or GET OUT. After interviewing and talking with hundreds of women of varied ages, backgrounds, cultures, and socioeconomic groups, I realized that women have a very specific set of criteria and expectations in mind when it comes to how they want their buying experience to FEEL. (By the way, you might as well get used to seeing the word feel, because you’ll see it a lot in this book.)
Emotions, feelings, and a sense ofpersonal connection are some of the biggest differences between maleand female buying styles. Womendevelop feelings about every aspectof the process, and those feelingsdrive their decision to buy from you—or not to buy from you.
You have to be able to apply that knowledge when selling to women. If you are a “feelings” kind of person already, this is going to come easier for you. If you aren’t, then selling to women will be more of a challenge, but TOTALLY doable! Rest easy; I’ll teach you exactly what you will need to do to have that more personal touch without leaving your comfort zone.
If there is one question that men have asked more than any other—more than, “How can I earn a million dollars?” or, “How can I live longer?” or, “How can I achieve wealth, fame, and success?”—it is simply,
“What do women WANT?”
For the purpose of this book, let’s amend that question to:
“What do women want to experienceas buyers in order to commit to thesale?”
Throughout my research, women have shared both good stories and bad about their shopping experiences. They told me what they wanted and what they didn’t want, what they needed and didn’t need, what they liked and didn’t like, and what they expected and didn’t get. Almost everything they described fell into one of the following five categories.
Women want the experience to be:
1 PERSONAL
2 PROFESSIONAL
3 PRODUCTIVE
4 They want to be PART OF THE PROCESS
5 POSITIVE
These are the FIVE KEY ELEMENTS needed to create the most desirable buying experience for a woman. Let’s look at each one UP CLOSE.
#1: SHE WANTS THE EXPERIENCE TO BE PERSONAL
The first thing you need to know (and accept) when selling to a woman is the following:
It’s not just business, it’s personal.
Anyone who says that business isn’t personal doesn’t know women at all. For most women, the decision to buy is based on many personal beliefs, perceptions, ideas, memories,