Why I'm boycotting a podcast I used to love- "The Salesman Podcast"

I’m a huge podcast fan. Every spare minute when I’m not in someone’s company or reading a book, I’ve got my earphones in, listening to one.

The title of one of my favourite podcasts, “The Salesman Podcast” by Will Barron has irked me for some time. Prior to launching Diverse City Careers, I worked in Business Development within the ICT industry, where I faced many challenges that come with working in an industry under-represented by women.

For instance, I’d often be mistaken for my male colleagues’ assistant or met with surprised looks when I spoke about complex technical solutions.

Whilst the title and image used for Will’s podcast always bothered me, it wasn’t until a listener called Eve questioned Will about this, I came to a realisation. As much as I gained insights from the podcast, it was against my values and I decided not to continue listening to it.

Eve emailed Will and asked, “why is it called The Salesman Podcast rather than the Sales Professional podcast or similar?”

“Great!” I thought. Eve just did what I was planning to do. With perhaps some level of naivety, I thought this title was a clear oversight from Will and he didn’t intend to be exclusive. 

However, to my dismay, Will had purposely titled the podcast with MAN and replied to Eve with the following comments:

·       70%+ of the sales people in the US are male, so he wanted to appeal to the larger demographic

·       He believed gaining advertising sponsorship would be a lot easier from ‘men-centric’ brands

·       He’s able to talk about suits a lot easier

·       One day he may consider a spin-off podcast more suited to females (Great! Can it please cover topics such as how different brands of make-up can improve your sales ability?)

*Cue face-palm*

One of the points Will made around appealing to the male demographic was that he wanted to target a niche. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but surely a podcast purely focused around B2B sales is a niche in itself, without having to only direct it at men. I’d love to hear from a male’s point of view- if the Salesman podcast was titled:

·       The Sales Professional Podcast

·       The Sales Expert Podcast

·       The Salesperson Podcast

Would any of these make you any less interested in listening to it because it didn’t have the word “man” in the title? I’m guessing it wouldn’t. Why not target 100% of the demographic by having a gender neutral title? However, I do want to be clear that it's not the title that bothered me the most, it was the responses when questioned.

Regarding advertising sponsorship, I reviewed Will’s current sponsors which include Showpad, Sparta Sales, Qwilr, Pipedrive and Objective Management Group. None of which look to me to be 100% targeting men- they’re gender neutral.

I think the biggest problem I have is with Will’s final statement around doing a spin-off show more suited to females. Since I’ve listened and learned from this podcast, never once (until now) have I felt it wasn’t suitable for me because of my gender. Will has featured male and female guest speakers, and the discussions always centred around sales techniques and tools, not around anything specific to men.

It’s comments like Will’s that take us further from gender parity. It’s quite possible a young lady beginning her career in sales will listen to what I just did, and become disheartened around belonging in the profession.

Will Barron, if you read this, I hope it encourages you to see things from a slightly different perspective and how damaging the comments made can be. Being a public figure increasing in popularity, I believe comes with social responsibility to lead by example.  

About the author

Gemma is co-founder of Diverse City Careers (DCC), Company Secretary of the Diversity Practitioners Association (DPA), and has served on two not-for-profit Boards’ including IT Queensland and Females in Technology and Telecommunications (FITT). 

Gemma is a regular speaker, delivered keynote speeches and sat on panels of events like Griffith University’s “Leadership Engaging Diversity”, Akolade's Boosting Women in STEM Conference and SOPAC 2016. Starting her career in the IT industry, Gemma has worked with Australia's leading consultancies and was the youngest board member appointed to the IT Queensland Board.

Gemma won the 2016 WIT Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the 2016 #Techdiversity Awards in the Leaders in Advertising category and was a finalist in the 2015 ARN Women in ICT Awards in the Innovation category, . 

 After working in an industry under-represented by women, Gemma co-founded DCC with the goal of making a difference. DCC works with leading companies focused on diversity including Atlassian, Bank of Queensland, BHP Billiton, Xero, Deloitte, AECOM and Origin.