Might allowing women to take the marketing lead move the industry forward expeditiously? Business gurus like Levine et al., Doug Rushkoff, and Seth Godin have observed that a gentler, kinder way of doing business is working better in today’s marketplace. Advances in communication technology are allowing the people to voice their resistance to being steamrolled by marketers. Instead they are displaying their individual passions and creating millions of tiny market niches. (Chris Anderson, The Long Tail.)
The old ways are largely styles and strategies that come naturally to men.
“Men tend to strut their stuff; women don’t”, says Marti Barletta in Marketing to Women. Today’s consumers are tired of hearing that every product is the greatest in the history of the world. Phrases like “scientific breakthrough” don’t get sales anymore. NULL
Advising today’s marketers, Levine et al ask: “The inflated, self-important jargon you sling around… what’s that got to do with us?” (The Cluetrain Manifesto, p. xvi) Men like to score on the first date. They push to make the sale on the first call.
Women like to wait until they’ve been wined and dined. On the first date, they open the kimono just a little. They revel in the romance before the score.
Godin says business is the same: “Great blogs… are built brick by brick, a little at a time. You learn what works and do it more… It’s okay to be long…” – Seven tips to build for meaning Men love to talk about a gadget’s technology, the science behind it.
Women care more about how other women are using the gadget to make their lives easier.
Many of my students tell me that they are trained to lead with the science of their product, to use technical jargon and breakthrough language to impress the customer, to sound like a mini-doctor. The reaction from their friends? “Their eyes glaze over!” Women come to my class to get the courage to go back to what they used to do years ago – tell how their product helped them. Marketing consultant David Merriman tells marketers that today “gobbledygook” doesn’t sell. (The Gobbledygook Manifesto)
Unlike men, women tend to support what’s best for the other person regardless whose side they’re on.
I’ll never forget how mothers at a little league baseball game cheered when any child got a hit, no matter what team they were on. The dads would react in shock: “Hey, that’s the wrong team. What are you cheering for?” Rushkoff sides with the women, in his book Get Back in the Box. He tells company CEOs to follow a play ethic that values staying in the game over a war ethic which values only winning and destroys innovation in the process. More support for women’s style comes from Dr. Gregory Berns, psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor: “Humans are wired to collaborate. Altruism turns people on even more than making money.” (Altruism, money and sex in our training programs) Harvard has just appointed its first woman president Drew Gilpin Faust – “to move the University forward expeditiously… in a time when society has become ambivalent, even skeptical about universities.”
Might allowing women to take the marketing lead move the industry forward expeditiously, in this time when the marketplace has become ambivalent, and even skeptical, about marketers?
82% of network marketers are women. What if they were given the freedom to build on their own natural styles to develop marketing approaches? Instead of being pushed to market like men? Given the current 95% drop out rate in the industry, how could we lose? ******************** This little piece was excerpted from “Friends, Lies and Network Marketing.”
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Kim Klaver (also know by her stage name Ms. Stud), is the Mastermind behind BananaMarketing.com (formerly MLM911.com) and is the author of all the books, tapes, tips and articles you will find on that site. Kim travels all over the US entertaining and motivating the troops, "New, New MLMers", with her radical tips and no hype techniques.
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