As sales professionals, women often face unfounded gender bias when competing for business in the boardrooms of America. When encountering senior executives as prospects, your objective is to move the sales process forward, while not allowing any preconceived gender bias to get in the way of your success.
As a professional, you know that your prospect’s time is valuable and you can't afford to waste it. Your prospects are not buying on the basis of features and benefits. Your prospects buy based upon how your product or service positively impacts their business results. They purchase based upon how your product or service will increase revenue (profits, productivity, efficiencies), decrease or manage expenses or cost, or how it will help manage, reduce or eliminate business risk.
Here are five ways to become a specialist who can communicate up front how your products or services will help your prospects to improve business results. Follow these guidelines and you can be treated as a peer in the boardroom, rather than a vendor waiting in the hallway, regardless of gender!
1. Become an Industry Specialist
Professional salespeople specialize in providing products and services to specific industries or vertical markets. They are very clear about the specialty, the industry and the value that they provide. They don't identify themselves as Mary Jones from XYZ Co—they introduce their value up front. For example, "Hello I'm Mary Jones, a revenue yield specialist in the hotel industry. We help major hotel chains increase their average yield per room by up to 25 percent through the utilization of our yield management software."
Your prospect knows immediately, up front, exactly who you are and the positive business results that your product or service can produce.
2. Use Industry Specific Language and Terminology
Professional salespeople inspire action by the language they use. Since you are a specialist, you should speak in terms that are specific to your prospect's industry.
You should be well read and up to date on current industry events affecting companies in your prospect’s industry vertical. You should address industry events that affect your prospect’s company and then speak in terms of the positive business results that your product or service will produce for your prospect.
Professional sales people also speak in terms of business consequences. You should always ask you prospects to identify the consequences of purchasing. Then ask prospects the consequences of NOT purchasing. Speak in terms that your prospects understand!
3. Exhibit Proactive Thought Leadership
Professional sales people don't sell—they educate.
You should approach prospects by allowing them to experience the value of your products or services before asking them to purchase.
Professional sales people utilize newsletters, webinars, white papers and seminars to provide information that addresses prospect's concerns and other industry events. When professional salespeople provide knowledge and information before ever attempting to sell prospects, the prospects can see firsthand, and up front, the value of working with a professional, a specialist and an industry thought leader.
4. Sell in the Boardroom
Professional sales people understand purchasing decisions are made at various levels within a company. They realize that there is a relationship between the size of the financial investment being made and the management level that makes that decision. They also realize that purchasing decisions are made for different reasons, and those reasons are often determined by where people reside in the organizational structure. Middle managers often buy for reasons other than those that are related to business performance. Sometimes they buy based on career management or job security. Middle managers often don't think like the CEO or CXO.
Professional sales people engage senior management, communicate the positive business results that will be delivered, and obtain their involvement as the buying process evolves. Because professional salespeople think, speak and act like CEO's, they are often viewed as valuable resources and are accepted as business peers.
5. Professionals Have Respect for Time – Their Prospect’s Time and Their Own Time
A sales professional knows that their greatest asset is time. Since you are a sales professionals and a specialists, you won't waste your prospect’s time if your product or service cannot or does not produce the business results that your prospect expects or requires.
You should be courteous and ask for a small amount of time to qualify your prospects. As a rule, you should recognize in short order if there is a potential fit for your product or service and whether or not your solutions will produce the business results your clients need. More importantly, you must be honest and acknowledge if there is not a fit. Why? Because your time is just as valuable as theirs is.
Professional salespeople only prosper when the products or services they sell can produce the business results that prospects need or expect. Otherwise they do not make a sale and do not meet their business needs—their quota!
Keep the Endgame in Mind: The Sale and Quota
Your time is limited and it is valuable. You don't want to squander it by dealing with prospects that will not help you achieve your goals—the sale and quota. I've discussed five ways to position yourself as a professional and a specialist. When you speak, think, and act like senior management, and focus your efforts on business results, you minimize the risk of being categorized and maximize the chances of being viewed as a business peer and thought leader, without any consequences of gender bias.
