- New podcast series celebrates women in sales
- Sales is “too male and too old-fashioned”
- Female sales leaders share their expertise and discuss the challenges the industry faces
The latest podcast series from UK sales transformation specialist Sales Talent is celebrating women in sales. Sales Talent MD Paul Owen has spoken to successful saleswomen about their experience in the sales industry over the years and why it is such a challenge to attract more women into sales roles.
“Sales is too male and too old-fashioned in the way that sales teams are hired, trained and managed. Exceptions apply, of course, but businesses often lament the lack of women in their sales team while also failing to create an environment that would attract more women.”
Paul Owen, MD, Sales Talent
Sales has long been a male-dominated industry. There is still, too often, a culture of hard knocks in sales teams: you get in early, leave late and work yourself to the bone with little encouragement. It’s all about “sell sell sell”, no matter what the economy is doing or the level of relevant value being sold in the product or service on offer. Then it’s time to head off to the pub and play drinking games.
That culture doesn’t work for many women, as Dr Cindy McGovern, author of Wall Street Journal bestseller Every Job is a Sales Job explains:
“As a woman, I might believe I can do a good sales job, but do I want to join a typical sales environment that’s male-focused? I don’t drink whisky, and I don’t play ball, so I had to find a different way to sell. I railed against the male-dominated culture of sales. Women have to find their own way. You don’t have to follow the route of men in sales.”
According to Sales Talent, creating a culture that welcomes women into the sales team could deliver impressive results, particularly when it comes to creating career opportunities for school leavers. Girls consistently outperform boys when it comes to GCSE and A Level performance. The reasons behind this are complex. The data doesn’t say that girls are cleverer than boys, it just says they’re more successful with their results. For sales teams who hire young women, this is a win either way. Either they are getting the cleverer gender when hiring young women or they are getting those who are better organised, more ambitious and more focused.
Communication style also comes into play here. As a rule, though there are always exceptions, young women are better listeners and more empathetic communicators than young men. Women ask more questions about others, listen more to their answers and show greater compassion in the responses they give. All of which are ideal behaviours for anyone going into sales.
Nicola Cook, Founder and CEO of growth specialists Company Shortcuts, observes:
“Often, women are better than men at sales. They’re better listeners and they’re more empathetic, in most cases anyway.”
Helga Saraiva-Stewart, an inspirational sales leader whose experience includes two decades of sales for Bloomberg, Reuters, HSBC and others, agrees:
“We’re better at emotional intelligence in most cases. We love to listen and have done it since we were kids in kindergarten.”
In addition to environments that often lack appeal, there are other challenges when it comes to encouraging more women into sales. One challenge is the lack of role models of senior women in sales positions across the UK. We need more of them, according to Sales Talent, not only because of the huge value they offer to the workplace but also to show the next generations of young women that sales is the place for them.
Many women also don’t see sales as a place for them because – like many people of both genders – they have a misconception of sales, seeing it as a hard-core ‘closing’ environment in which sellers are forcing buyers to part with their money. This is certainly not true for almost all sales jobs, as Dr Cindy McGovern points out:
“Sales is about nurturing, but it’s not seen that way, particularly by women.”
Another of the challenges in promoting the idea of getting more women into sales is that they are less likely to put themselves forward for sales roles even if they want them and then less likely to push for progression in the same way that their male colleagues do. Nicola Cook sums it up succinctly:
“Women struggle with imposter syndrome. A woman is less likely to ask for a pay rise.”
She points out, though, that there are also advantages to being a woman in sales:
“I spend most of my time in board rooms with men. I don’t even notice any more. The way I approach conflict in a business, as a woman, is received differently. If I was a man, they would lock horns with me. Being a woman has been an advantage, definitely later in my career.”
Dr Cindy McGovern agrees:
“For women in sales, when you speak people listen partly because it’s less common for a woman to speak up. Even today, on a panel with business leaders, I’m usually the only woman.”
Of course, truly broadening the appeal of sales goes beyond attracting women to the industry. As Sales Talent’s Paul Owen points out, sales would also benefit from a widening of its ethnicity. Rishi Sunak may now be Prime Minster – the first British Asian to reach the office – but too few British Asian and other BAME school leavers are welcomed into sales. There is a shortage of talent in all markets and functions right now and that’s as true in sales as any other industry (arguably more so and for a longer time). Sales needs to work to make itself more attractive to all backgrounds, though it has at least made a start, as Helga Saraiva-Stewart concludes:
“Companies are slowly understanding that it’s not about gender, it’s not about nationality or even location anymore. It’s about the skills you have.”
For more information, please contact Sales Talent via email [email protected] or visit https://salestalentuk.com/
