Selling to Women

Yesterday I received a courtesy visit from my local business banker. He also brought a representative from the consumer banking side. As smart salespeople their goal was to meet with me (they were new with the bank and had never met me before) and find out what I do; fill me in on what they were doing; keep me abreast of any new services they now offer and see if there’s anything I might need that they could help me with.

As it turned out there was something I needed that I didn’t know they had, so I signed up for it. Amazing what can happen when you show up and actually tell people what you’re doing.

But the point of this article is that we were talking about my house and mortgages, when the question came up about who my builder was, which of course led to a very interesting and illuminating story.

When we first decided to build, back around 1997, we were recommended to a local builder who had done quite a bit of work in Chapel Hill. We gave him a small deposit (which was refundable should we decide to back out) and got ready to work with him on building our new home.

Then the cracks started to show. First, many of his references were not coming back with glowing reports. You have to wonder; how does someone give you references if he’s not sure they’re going to give him top grades? But the biggest problem was with my wife.

She noticed that each time we met with the builder he would address all his comments, questions and answers toward me and totally ignore my wife. Not only was my wife not too crazy about this, but, as a logical person, I thought this was kind of stupid.

Think about it. If you’re a builder speaking to a married couple about the house you’re going to build for them, why would you ignore the wife? First off, you shouldn’t ignore anyone, but if you have to ignore someone, you’re far better off ignoring the husband.

Let’s face it; if the husband wants something in the house and the wife doesn’t; chances are they’re not getting it. But if the wife wants it and the husband doesn’t, THEY’RE GETTING IT!

Needless to say, this builder got dumped and we found another one who not only did a better job, but found us a better property and brought the project in for $20,000 less than the first guy.

I thought of this story again today as I was watching the Today Show. (No I don’t make a habit of watching this show, but my daughter was appearing on it as part of a promo for a movie about Jump Rope she and her teammates are going to be in; but that’s another story). They did a piece on Alpha Moms; high powered women who own businesses and raise families. They made the point that women control 80% of the purchases in the home, and since they spend at least 90 minutes a day online, they are very savvy consumers.

You’d think with all the purse strings today’s women control, companies and salespeople would be a heck of a lot more savvy in how they market and sell to this exploding segment of the economy. Yet, there are still salespeople who will approach a married couple by addressing all comments to the husband or walk into an office and assume the man is the boss.

It was pointed out that 70% of all car purchases are made by women, but there are still many women who tell me they hate walking into dealerships because they’re either ignored, talked down to, or told to come back with their husbands.

Women are the primary bread-winners in 45% of all two paycheck households and the primary bread-winners in 55% of all American households (lots of single parent households). Women start up businesses at a far faster rate than men. In addition, there are more women in law school and med school than men and on the undergraduate level the ratio of women to men is fast approaching 3 to 2.

While many companies have made a concerted effort to capitalize on this exploding gold mine over the last ten years, it amazes me how many are still living in the dark ages. But I guess that’s why it’s so easy to be successful: there’s so little competition.