2023 Sales Trend 3: Sell Like A Woman

Sales trend 3 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends Report for 2023 is about women in business and, in particular, women in sales.

No more cutthroat competition to optimise quotas, no more lone-wolf salesperson, no more hard-sell tactics; traditional sales stereotypes are dying out and this is very good for business, customers, teams, and for communities.

Welcome to collaboration, teamwork, problem solving, value-based solutions, sustainability, gender equality, diversity, human decency, and respect as the emerging norms in sales practices, strategies, and sales leadership if we want highly productive, profitable, respectable, and resilient businesses.

Traditional sales stereotypes -personality-driven, product-based, transactional, reactive, and sometimes aggressive are proven to be much less effective and clearly unappealing to most clients.

Today, people -customers, employees, suppliers- want more human-centred, respectful, productive, trustworthy, and sustainable ways of selling and doing business.

Since the early 2000s, a growing body of research into sales effectiveness consistently shows women outperforming men in achieving sustainable sales results and authentic, mutually prosperous client relationships, especially in B2B sales, bringing with them specific qualities and capabilities that differ from traditional sales stereotypes.

It would seem like a no-brainer from every business case presented that sales teams should be stacked with women by now; however, the trend still shows a low adoption rate of women in sales and sales leadership roles. So why the slow recognition and lack of capitalisation of the power of women in sales and sales leadership?

Persistent barriers and biases

Sales has been seen -and is still seen in some quarters- largely as a man’s career and rarely promoted as a career in which women could excel. This is in part due to the aggressive ‘always be closing’ sales stereotypes and hyper-competitive individualistic nature of sales careers promoted by various sales training ‘gurus’, some industries, and the media positioning selling as a combat sport rather than the collaborative, partnership, team-based role that it is.

With these stereotypes as a reference, women are often seen as ‘too weak’ to do sales. Their sales abilities, including negotiation, communication, project management and general abilities, are often underestimated, and their knowledge devalued.

Ironically, when the excellent qualities women bring to the sales profession are noticed they are often seen as a novelty by most senior managers which is a major risk in these changing times. Research by Rosenbaum revealed the vast majority of sales managers were completely unaware that these distinguishing qualities were what made their high performing salespeople (women) highly effective and successful.

The lack of recognition of what women bring to sales and sales leadership creates real obstacles for women with them receiving unsolicited advice to change fields, lower earning capacity, and far fewer promotions to sales leadership roles.

These limiting views on salespeople and sales cultures are not conducive to effective sales performance where client engagement, loyalty, effective solutions, teamwork, and sustainable sales growth matter and are also the reason why fewer women proactively seek out sales roles.

Lack of representation, sponsorship, and commitment to career advancement and diversity

According to a 2021 study done in the USA by Xactly, women make up only 29% of sales representatives and just 26% of sales managers even though they are proven to outperform their male colleagues. This study found that the lack of female representation can be attributed to many things, such as negative stereotypes, sexism, poor recruitment methods, and a gender wage gap, with women receiving lower salaries than their male counterparts.

Women in sales describe feeling like they had to work twice as hard as their male counterparts to prove themselves. There is still very little support and sponsorship for women in sales and sales leadership. The 2019 BCG Sales Leadership Gender Gap found that globally, “There are fewer women leaders in sales than in any other business function, except Supply Chain and Logistics.” The same research observed that women in sales see less commitment to the advancement of women within their sales function than their peers in other departments do.

Women who pursue sales careers often don’t feel sufficiently valued or supported at work and are more likely to look for a new job in the following three years.

Interestingly, women and men start their careers with the same level of ambition, but at organisations where employees report less diversity and support, the drop-off in ambition is faster for women.

Too many businesses and sales leaders are still myopic to the power of women in sales and sales leadership. According to the 2020 Gartner Diversity in Sales Survey perception and reality don’t match:

• 84% of CSOs are satisfied with the gender diversity of their sales leadership teams yet 50 % of sales professionals believe their organisations struggle to recruit and hire women
• 86% of male sales leaders say women have the same opportunities for advancement as men however only 61 % of women say the same

This is unacceptable and it’s no surprise then why most women leave sales off their career list and most businesses don’t capitalise on the power of women in sales.

Furthermore, Australia has slipped backwards on the 2021 Global Gender Gap Index. The World Economic Forum ranked Australia at 50 out of 156 countries in 2021. Australia’s rankings in terms of women’s equality and empowerment have fallen dramatically from the 12th to 70th place in economic participation and opportunity, from 57th to 99th in health and survival, and from 32nd to 54th in political empowerment since 2006. This is completely unacceptable.

A larger global picture provides an alarming view. While women are 51% of the population in OECD countries:

1. Women hold less than 5% of CEO roles in the Fortune Global 500. (In Australia there are just 14 CEOs among Australia’s top 200 companies (7%)
2. Women hold 33% of management roles
3. 25% of seats on publicly listed boards are held by women
4. There is a 22% global gender pay gap

A new global study carried out in 30 countries including Australia, by Ipsos, in collaboration with the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership released on International Women’s Day, in 2022 showed key findings were:

1. One fifth of Australians (22%) agree that gender inequality doesn’t really exist. Men are more than twice as likely to agree (30%), than women (14%)
2. A quarter of Australians (26%) believe that feminism does more harm than good, and one fifth (21%) believe that men have lost in terms of economic and political power or socially because of feminism. Again, men are at least twice as likely to say this than women
3. Globally, one in ten (11%) find it acceptable to use abusive language online, and men are almost twice as likely to find this acceptable (14% vs 7% of women). The difference is largest in Australia, with 23% of men and only 5% of women finding this acceptable

In the USA and other parts of the world, draconian laws are being passed that explicitly work against women’s agency, freedoms, and right to exist as equals.

It’s not fair on any level and it certainly doesn’t make any economic sense to ignore or be at war with 50% of the population if you want to flourish and prosper in business.

We are at a major tipping point.

There is a fierce battle underway – a fight to hold onto old patriarchal ways of doing business versus the invitation to step into a more human-centred, respectful, collaborative and clearly more equitable and profitable way of doing business.

The moral case and business case for gender diversity in sales and leadership

Women matter. Diversity matters. Human decency matters.

Smart businesses know this. Despite the depressing statics above, change is happening.

Smart leaders know that if you want to excel in sales and business, it pays to sell like a woman.

Many more companies are now making gender diversity an explicit goal of sales recruiting, committing to specific objectives for sourcing, selecting, and attracting women. Companies are reaching out to source female job applicants, such as professional associations for women in sales.

Many businesses want more women in their sales teams, selling and leading, and clients are asking us at Barrett to deliver training for women on how to empower them to reach their potential and sell more confidently, especially in male-dominated industries.

Why?

Women bring specific qualities and capabilities that differ from the traditional sales stereotypes. These specific qualities and capabilities are not exclusive to women, men can adopt them too, it’s just that women make the most of them, consciously or not, and this makes a huge difference to sales and business success.

Qualities such as collaboration, creating a shared vision for success, orchestrating internal resources, empathy, deep listening, and problem solving are where women excel and what clients value in today’s world when it comes to working with salespeople.

Other qualities women deploy include open-mindedness, stakeholder management, teamwork and understanding, and managing client emotions that help facilitate relationship-building and create a loyal customer base and therefore, better sales results. According to Forbes, 74% of clients are more likely to buy if they feel they’ve been heard and understood.

These qualities also help women increase diversity in both client groups and the sales industry leading to the attraction of more clients. Smart organisations are already acting to rectify the gender imbalance in sales and sales leadership so they can use that improvement to their advantage. Organisations see greater profits with more women in sales.

Selling is a team sport

Multiple studies have found that women prefer to work in teams, while men prefer to work alone. Research also found that women tend to opt for team-based compensation more frequently than men do. According to Hubspot, “the benefits of this kind of collaboration transcends the sales departments with the most effective salespeople collaborating extensively with marketing and other departments in the value chain. Organisations that emphasize close collaboration between sales and marketing close 38% more deals and achieve more than double the revenue (208%) as compared to organizations with disconnected sales and marketing teams.”

Women-led sales teams

Research into sales management has found that sales teams led by competent women are positively linked to critical factors such as:.

1. Superior performance with customers and higher sales unit performance
2. Helping with work-related problems and effective organisational performance
3. Higher employee retention and better job satisfaction and job involvement

Women-led teams, also tend to be more gender-diverse than men-led teams. According to Xactly’s research “women led sales teams have a 94% win and quota attainment rate — three percentage points higher than men-led teams. Additionally, a greater representation of women in sales leads to a more diverse client group.”

Female-led sales teams had roughly equal numbers of men and women, while male-led teams were more than three-quarters men. Promoting more women to sales management and leadership roles is a clear path to attracting and retaining more female salespeople.

According to research from the University of Illinois in Chicago, “organisations with more gender diversity had a 15% higher profit margin. Additionally, businesses with more women board directors had a 42 % better return on sales than businesses with fewer women board directors.”

Women’s agency

Women’s ambition is not the problem: Women want the top jobs.

Selling careers are a line role that gives high visibility to women and can be an excellent pathway to executive leadership. Mastering the skills of professional salespeople gives women agency, too. Learning the craft of professional selling is very empowering for women. It opens many doors. It can be their ticket to a better life, better careers, job prospects, choices, and financial security.

What can you do to capitalise on the power of women in sales and sales leadership?

1. Highlight and promote the work of women in your sales teams
2. Position the sales profession, its processes and principles as an essential set of commercial and life skills that give women more agency and power over their careers, earning capacity and life choices
3. Help women develop and master the knowledge, skills, and mindset of highly successful and skilful women in sales and sales leadership roles
4. Help women, in any role, have greater visibility, influence, and presence in their industry
5. Influence and drive positive change by placing more competent women in sales and sales leadership roles leading to greater participation and representation of women within organisations and across industries at all levels
6. Help redefine sales stereotypes and identify unconscious biases that can impact the development and progression of women in sales and business
7. Include all genders in creating respectful, safe, supportive, and highly productive sales cultures and work environments where everyone can flourish. This includes building peer-to-peer network support and allyship
8. Together we can reposition the sales profession, its processes, principles, and practices for a world that values and respects equality, diversity, inclusion, collaboration, sustainable high performance, wellbeing, healthy prosperous relationships, and better business outcomes for all. Everybody wins – personally and professionally.

Gender diversity in sales is not only about equality and social justice, it’s about better business performance, great reputations, loyal clients, healthier cultures, and more prosperous communities.

The sales profession has changed.

It’s time to Sell Like A Woman.

Testimonial

“The change has been outstanding. Two years ago I couldn’t have imagined that Sales would be in such great shape already. I thought it would’ve taken years but here we are now with a fantastic sales team, sales infrastructure and processes, strategy and culture that is growing and making a huge difference to our business and our clients. As an accountant, I knew very little about sales but Barrett’s Sales Strategy & Operations Framework and the Barrett team have steered us in the right direction.”

Related topics

12 Sales Trends for 2023 – Humans at the Centre

Sell Like A Woman Launch – The Event

Sell Like A Woman

A year ago

Sales Tips for Uncertain Times – Here’s How

Three years ago

Open for Business: How to keep selling & doing business during COVID-19

Ten years ago

Leadership in Uncertain Times