Gender

Mars and Venus go shopping

by Michelle Chihara

Professional workshop leaders have already made a fortune off men's and women's contrasting styles of loving, speaking, working, and sneezing. But what about their ways of shopping? In GenderSell (Simon and Schuster) author and consultant Judith Tingley and sales professional Lee Robert have made the inevitable gender-splitting contribution to the world of sales.

The market reality, Tingley and Robert say, is that women now make 85 percent of America's purchasing decisions and account for a quarter of the nation's sales force. That's a dramatic increase from 10 years ago. But their market research shows that our perception of reality is stuck somewhere in the '50s. Customers consider cars, stereos, and financial services to be "male" items that should be bought from men. Houses should be bought from women. Women use computers. Men love them. Women are better at relationships and rapport-building. Men have a better handle on cold, hard facts.

But sales folk can use all this to their advantage, according to Tingley. She spoke with the Phoenix from her office in Phoenix, Arizona.

Q: Your book was inspired by the increasingly diverse customer base and sales force. Isn't it ironic that so many of your findings are pretty stereotypical?

A: They're kind of stereotypical. But the fact of the matter is that when the book says women are more relationship-oriented than men -- that came from some research. It didn't come just from our heads. It came from asking people what they liked about women and men selling.

Q: That means these are preconceived notions about salespeople and products. Can people really compensate for that while making a sale?

A: You can't do this: you can't change people's perception of you and influence people to do what you want them to do at the same time. Have you ever worked with men who think about you stereotypically?

Q: Yes . . .

A: Have you tried to change that about them?

Q: Um, no.

A: No! 'Cause it's not going to work. It's going to interfere with your ability to influence them, to sell them on an idea that you have, to get them to collaborate with you.

If you can do it without selling your soul, it is really better to not try to fight their perception directly, but to try to gradually alter that perception with the results you produce.

Q: So you're saying that if we start out at a disadvantage, in terms of the way we're perceived, women should just be twice as good?

A: I don't believe there's a shortcut to being perceived as competent, other than being competent. I get very mad about this every three or four months. It still happens to me when I'm doing consulting with senior male executives. But it doesn't do me or them any good for me to be confrontative about it.

Q: How do you make the sale anyway?

A: I use what I call indirect-influence techniques. Somebody else might call it being manipulative, or playing the game. I really take what I call the "strong one-down position." Instead of coming across in an aggressive way -- that just raises their resistance -- instead, I say, "Let me hear what your point of view is. I understand where you're coming from."

That might not be what I want to do, but that's how they're going to accept at least some of my influence attempts. I'm asking for all of their objections up front.

It's not easy. I'm sure you know that.

Q: Aren't you just describing a situation where women are forced to be better at relationship- or rapport-building?

A: Yeah, women are forced into that. Whether they have a natural proclivity to do that or not is sort of up for grabs. A tremendous amount of research says gender differences are not learned, but come from actual brain differences. I think that that may be.

But what is also true is that anybody who is in the minority culture has to be better than the people in the majority at reading other people -- at having those relationship skills.

If you're an American tourist in France, you think they spend any time reading you? No. Do you spend a lot of time reading them? Absolutely. Man or woman.

At multinational companies, women often do better than men as managers, when they are going over to other cultures. That's because they've always had to adapt; they already have that ability and skill. Sales is one form of influence. Management is another.

Q: Are we ever going to get over our stereotypes based on gender?

A: I think we are -- I just think it's happening at a very, very slow pace.

Q: Do you worry that by catering to the sales-techniques stereotypes, you might be reinforcing them?

A: I guess I don't look at it as catering to them. I look at it as adapting to what is there.