Active Listening Skills are Key to Winning in the Women’s Market. Here’s Why.

A mature woman sits down for an introductory phone call with a prospective financial advisor. Right off the bat, the advisor talks nonstop about his experience, his perspective on the market, and the pros and cons of specific financial products.

He talks so much she can’t interject a word, and after what feels like forever, she starts to tune him out. He has yet to ask her a single question about her goals or what she’s looking for, and he is talking about products that are irrelevant to her needs.

She cuts the call short and hangs up the phone, and he never hears from her again. He is left with the impression that she wasn’t serious about engaging an advisor. She was.

ACTIVE LISTENING OVER PASSIVE STEREOTYPES

To effectively engage with modern women, we need to drop the stereotypes and learn what it really takes to connect. Here are some old assumptions to avoid:

• Don’t assume your customer is married, no matter her age or motherhood status. Marriage rates are lower than they’ve ever been, due to factors such as high divorce rates, the cultural acceptance of cohabitating, and the increase in diverse, nontraditional family structures.
• Don’t assume that if your customer is married, she has the same last name as her spouse. Many women keep their maiden names upon marriage.
• Don’t assume your married customer is not the breadwinner. As we see in the numbers mentioned in the previous chapter, women are increasingly the primary income earners for their households.
• Don’t assume her partner or spouse is a man. In the United States, same-sex marriage is legal in all fifty states.
• Don’t assume that all married women are mothers. There are more adults than ever who do not have kids; there are also many who have them later in life. I’ve interviewed women who were mistaken for their children’s nannies or even their grandmothers.

TIPS FOR BETTER CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN CONSUMERS

To help you in this area even further, here are some of the conversational “watch-outs” to avoid:

• When you find out a woman is childless, don’t probe for reasons why, unless the information is needed to help her make a buying decision. Otherwise, respect her privacy in this area. Some women are childless by chance, and others are childless by choice. One way to respectfully learn about your customers’ lifestyles—male or female—is to address topics such as what a typical day looks like for them, who lives in their households, or who else might use a product they’re interested in buying.
• Don’t say, “I guess you’re more of a career person, right?” to a woman who doesn’t have kids, for the same reasons as above.
• If you meet a woman who tells you she has one child, do not ask, “Don’t you want your child to have a brother or sister?” Regardless of your good intentions, do your best to avoid making comments that your customers could interpret as judgments about their personal lives.

Excerpted with permission from Winning Her Business: How to Transform the Customer Experience for the World’s Most Powerful Consumer by Bridget Brennan, copyright Bridget Brennan.

Whether it’s being talked over, or never getting a chance to speak in the first place, it’s flat out frustrating not to feel heard. Who would want to do business with a company that didn’t seem to care what they thought? On the other hand, who doesn’t love it when a company asks them what they think, let alone takes what they have to say seriously?

Comment below with a time a company has either gained or lost your business thanks to their active listening skills, or lack thereof.