How to Effectively Sell to Women Buyers

All great salespeople understand and embrace that selling to different customers requires different skills. In the electronics world, women are increasingly influential in making purchasing decisions.

Technology revenue from female buyers was 38 percent for the three-month period ended November 2008, according to the NPD Group. While that's down from 41 percent in November 2007, its shows that women have a strong influence in CE purchases.

Selling skills are, in many ways, elementary. But as straightforward as they are, it never hurts to review them.

Here are three tips on selling to women buyers.

Engage Both Partners

We've all heard stories about salespeople focusing on one spouse, virtually ignoring the other, and inevitably losing the sale.

When dealing with a couple, it's typical that one of them is the decision maker. The other has a vote, but not the final say. But odds are either partner is just as likely to be the final decision maker.

A huge part of sales is building relationships. An important part of that is picking up on cues and understanding what role each client plays, flexing your selling accordingly.

Probe for Hot Buttons

This is part and parcel of every sale, and you should be doing it all the time. And it's especially critical when working with female buyers.

Since men and women are different, their motivations and priorities are also going to differ. When considering a cinema room, men are more likely to be swept away by a huge screen and an outlandish sound system. The thought of watching football in a high-definition environment might be their tipping point.

Female clients I've worked with have also been amenable to a fantastic home cinema, but their motivation was an environment that would make their kids more likely to hang out with their friends at home watching movies and playing video games, rather than being out all hours of the night.

Ask the right questions, listen to the answers, and you'll find out what motivates your clients to buy.

Build Consensus and "Get to Yes"

The current trend in sales training has been on relationship selling. But the "hard sell" and the "always be closing" school of thought only work in limited context. One of the core principles of relationship selling is that you close the sale when you've earned the right to do so.

By "earning the right," you've successfully probed the clients and effectively demonstrated how the solution you have in mind meets their needs. By adding up one agreement after another over the course of your sales presentation, you've built consensus on both trust and value. Now you've got the right to ask for the sale.

In the course of my sales career, I've tried a lot of things, from hardball ABC to relationship selling. The best professional selling results, by far, come from the latter techniques. Follow them and you'll find that winning sales process.

Lee Distad is a freelance CEDIA Certified Professional Designer who offers design and process consultation to firms in the Custom Installation industry, as well as copy writing and other professional writing services. Lee’s business and industry blog can be read at http://www.leedistad.com