Do The Best Saleswomen Challenge with Empathy?
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rue business champions not only sell better; they also negotiate and communicate with far greater behavioural skill than their average peers when dealing with prospects, partner organisations and customers. If they do this well, price is less likely to become the major issue for them. By behavioural skill, at Huthwaite International, we mean the verbal behaviours: the words we use to make our case persuasively.
Is it something women do better than men?
When I interviewed the 10 women finalists for this award, they unanimously told me that women are better listeners and better at building relationships. And a few went on to say that they asked questions in more depth. At the pure sales level, there’s no conclusive evidence either way, except
to say that in our most recent* research, women describing their own levels of confidence when they sell, came out lower than men (67% of women described themselves as confident or very confident versus 84% of men who did). But the main thrust of our new research is specifically into verbal behaviour used at the negotiation stage. In this, women claim less negotiation success than men, though that doesn’t mean that they actually achieve less success. We know that expressing feelings verbally is a behaviour that correlates to success, but women are less keen on doing that, and are also less likely to use what they would see as challenging behaviours, such as what we call Defend/Attack – the term is probably self-explanatory and is a behaviour best avoided. Women are also less keen on Incredulous Testing Understanding – something like: “So, you’re really proposing that
we give you 7% price reduction, but you aren’t going to alter our delivery KPIs in return?”. It can be a helpful behaviour, but could be seen as a less empathetic approach, and maybe that’s why women avoid it. Often, though, it’s an effective alternative to direct disagreement. The distinctions are subtle ones, and perhaps that proves that looking for behavioural differences in business between men and women is becoming ever less relevant – and that, in the 21st century, is surely a good thing. What we do know, beyond doubt, is that in negotiation or selling, for men or women, in any country of the world, a questioning, empathetic, consultative approach is the one that brings the best results. *Huthwaite International survey of 1300 respondents May-October 2014 in 53 countries.
Written by: Anders Hjort www.huthwaite.co.uk
Anders Hjort is Regional Development Director and Behaviour Change Expert at Huthwaite International, the world’s leader in research-based behaviour change training for organisations seeking to improve the way they sell, negotiate and communicate.
50 WOMEN IN SALES AWARDS DECEMBER 2014