So your sales team has done their sales call planning. This is an important call. It is with a large prospective customer you have been pursuing for a long time. Your sales team is well prepared. They know the market; they have researched the prospective client and have an understanding of some of the challenges they are facing. They have aligned your product/service offering to the prospective customer’s needs. They have researched the buyers. You have reviewed all of the elements of this critical call plan with your sales team’s manager.
They are well-prepared and ready to go…right? Maybe not.
If they did not account for the gender of the buyer or the gender makeup of the buying team, your sales team and you are not prepared.
Gender Matters
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2009), women comprise 50% of the workforce, and 72% are in management, professional, and other purchasing-related positions. So the odds are that a woman will be on the buying team or leading it. Plus, there are fundamental differences in how women evaluate traditional selling approaches.
In their research study, “Investigating Sales Approaches and Gender in Customer Relationships,” authors John Wood, Julie Johnson, James Boles, and Hiram Barksdale looked at selling behaviors and gender to determine their impact on buyer’s judgments about salespeople and the outcomes of the buyer-seller relationship. They surveyed over 800 buying companies across various industries, with buyers purchasing at least $50,000 of goods and services annually from selected vendors in the telecom industry. 41.5% of the buyers responding were female, and the balance (58.5%) were male. They asked questions regarding the buyer’s perception of the selling approach (transaction, adaptive or provocative), conflict, trustworthiness, economic satisfaction, non-economic satisfaction, and commitment to the salesperson. They also measured expected future interactions with the salesperson and buyer autonomy.
The results are telling – gender matters when building trust and managing conflict in the buyer commitment equation.
Wood, Johnson, Boles, and Barksdale found that buyers’ perception of sales approaches directly influences their judgment of their salesperson’s trustworthiness and their assessment of conflict with the salesperson and that male and female buyers see things differently. For example, men are more agents in their work roles, while women are more communal. These differences may lead the buyer to place more or less weight on the elements that influence judgment about satisfaction.
When you think about sales effectiveness at your organization, does it seem like you are close but just missing those unique elements that give you that competitive edge? Looking for a way to understand how your buyer thinks, decides, and reveals information? At The Nova Consulting Group, we believe that professional selling is a craft. With the Advanced Sales Conversation©, you have those missing elements that move your salespeople from competency to mastery. With our deep understanding of what makes and sustains high-performance organizations, we provide integrated solutions that do not replace your sales methodology and yet advance a progressive selling mindset. Be bolder, more insightful, and get results. To learn more about how to master the craft of sales and encourage sustainable high performance, call (617) 933-7249 or email info@novaconsultinggrp.com.
