I want to say that it’s hard to believe that we’re talking about overcoming sexism when selling in the 21st century. But I actually think that sexism in selling is still a big challenge. I hold many sales training sessions and many negotiations where the room is mostly full of men. But I recently encountered a situation in a sales training workshop in China, for a large multi-national, which has prompted me to write about this. Two of the female delegates in the session approached me separately to say that, in Asia, they found it challenging in the male orientated markets of the East. One question was, “What strategies did I have for overcoming sexism when selling in a male orientated environment where sometimes the clients will not even meet with you, just because you’re a woman?”
I do have considerable personal experience of sexism, having been a single father of two young boys. But in this case, being neither a female salesperson nor from Asia, I decided to hold a short collective brainstorming session after the main workshop with the aim of answering the questions in a more considered way. My aim was to create strategies for overcoming sexism when selling for the two ladies that had asked me. With input from fellow trainer Tony Parks, who has extensive experience of cross cultural sales and leadership training, here’s the conclusions that we reached as a group, not in order of priority:
- Sell the value: if you can show how you can create value for their business, they are more likely to see past their prejudice
- Sell internally: if you can show the value of the customer to your own business, you may be able to get male customer facing resources to use as part of the sales team. In this way you become the conductor of the orchestra.
- Use the whole team: similar to point 2 It’s not necessary to be the ‘point person’ you can manage others to land the deal.
- Buy from V Sell to: many men like to buy from women but do not like to be sold to by women. So facilitating them through the purchasing process rather than dragging them through your sales process could work better.
- We ALL have credibility issues: everyone has credibility issues to deal with. It may be that you’re new to a market or too young, or too old. It may be that you’re a man in a woman’s world. Don’t take other people’s prejudices personally. Create a plan to overcome them and you will succeed!
It is unfortunate that in the 21st century we still need to develop strategies for overcoming sexism when selling. But these are the strategies that we found to help counter this unpalatable prejudice. What experiences have you had and what strategies have you developed for overcoming sexism when selling?
