In a bouncing southern accent, Pam Fry of Mr. Rogers Windows tells the story of selling replacement windows to a North Carolina couple — a farmer and his wife. It was late on a Saturday afternoon, her sixth and last day of a tough week. She had driven way out into the country to meet with the couple and was in no mood for a tough sell. She surmised from a few minutes alone with the woman that the marriage was a traditional one; the husband would do all the talking and deciding. Seated at the table in her professional skirt and blouse and full of confidence, Fry began her usual presentation. The husband, a big man who'd come down from the fields in his overalls, smacked the table and stood up. “You know, Ms. Fry,” he said in a thick drawl, “if you had come in here with your blue jeans and boots I might think you know what you're talking about. But you come in here all frillied up and I'm just not sure you know what you're talking about.”
Fry disarmed him by looking him right in the eye. “I understand exactly what you're saying,” she said to him calmly. “Now I'd like the opportunity to show you what I'm talking about.” She proceeded to wow him with her knowledge. Three hours and 15 minutes later — about an hour longer than normal, she says — she had sold $10,000 worth of windows. “Then he walked me out to the car and gave me a jar of the family barbeque sauce and meat from the pig they'd roasted and had in the freezer.”
When Nicki Joy, a sales trainer and speaker, hears stories like this, she sees it as another example of the ways that women's inherent nature helps them become good salespeople. In the introduction to her book, Selling is a Woman's Game, Joy writes that women are blessed by Mother Nature with “special gifts — the gift of gab, compassion, patience, emotion, endurance, tolerance, versatility, and resourcefulness, just to name a few.” Feminist arguments concerning the use (or abuse) of stereotypical feminine traits aside, Joy points out that “these skills, traits, characteristics, and tendencies are just the stuff that good salespeople are made of.”
Anecdotal evidence — for there are no hard facts — bear her out in the remodeling industry. In this traditionally male business, there are a small group of women who are owners or designers doing sales, or even, like Fry, doing straight sales. But in many cases they're outselling their male counterparts.
It's a Woman's WorldPeggy Fisher, co-owner with her husband, Ken, of the Fisher Group in northern Virginia, says that “women make a heavy percentage of the decisions in a remodeling project,” so she finds that although a husband may make “the dollar … decisions, he will often defer to his wife on finishes, materials, styles, and eventually price.” A woman selling has an advantage because “women have real strong bonding and [recognize] real life considerations in space planning, style, and aesthetics.”
Joy sees this as a basic psychological principle: We trust people most like ourselves. “Women connect to create trust on the spot,” she says. “They try to find commonality with other women. ‘Oh yeah,' they say, ‘me too.' ‘You like mysteries? I do, too.' Our communication is centered around that. It's part of a trust-building process.”
Trust also is gained by listening, which Fisher and Joy agree is integral to the selling process as well as a natural part of women's communication style. “From what I've observed,” Fisher says, “men tend to be more big-picture and bottom line. Women tend to go down the byroads and hear the shades of meaning and subtleties of what's important to somebody.”
Listening is important when what you're selling is “being purchased emotionally not logically,” Joy says. “There's an old saying, ‘Logic makes people think. Emotion makes them act.' This is true for the remodeling field. A home is an emotional thing.” She believes “women are better at picking up buying signals — a couple moving closer physically, asking questions, men clearing their throats, women wetting their lips — they're more intuitive.”
Fry says listening is what has made her so successful — last year she sold close to $2 million. “When men walk in the door, people are afraid of being sold. They're not as good listeners. Women come across as believable, trusting, genuine, and they are typically relational.”
As Joy says, “You don't talk people into buying. You listen people into buying.”
It's a Man's World, TooFor years, selling has been a man's game, and men have been successful at it — obviously they're doing something right. It's not really a matter of one gender being better than another. To look at traditional female characteristics means you have to appreciate the same in males. So it's often a pairing of characteristics that creates the best sales team. Fisher's husband goes with her on sales calls. “He's strong on structural aspects. He thinks in contractor terms — ‘What if I take out this wall?' Clients trust him, and he sells to them from his point of view.”
Men, in particular, may feel more comfortable with another man talking bricks and mortar. “The likelihood that women have a background in structural issues is lower,” says Tom Kelly whose firm, Neil Kelly Designers/Remodelers in Portland, Ore., has 18 salespeople in its design/build division — 13 of them women. “Women on our staff are more inclined to emphasize design as part of their expertise.” But, he adds that a lot of the women on the sales staff sell projects with major structural components. “So the team works together.”
It's the same for Dave Bryan of Blackdog Design/Build Remodel in Salem, N.H.. “On the construction side of things [the women on his sales staff] are less sure of themselves.” After several years in the business, though, women become more familiar with the structural aspects and can sell that too. But they have to prove their knowledge to do it well.
Peggy Fisher is a certified remodeler and kitchen designer and allied member of the American Society of Interior Designers; she has studied construction and building. When a male client hears her say “There needs to be ducting in there for the HVAC,” and they know she has studied the lighting and electrical, his trust is raised. “A lot of men naturally assume that if you're a guy you must know [these things]. When they see that as a woman I have an understanding, they have greater trust.”
“A lot of couples will take the day off for the first day of demolition,” says Tisha Kuntz, who owns Verdugo Hills Interiors in Burbank, Calif. As a sole practitioner, she's involved in every aspect of the process. “Once [the husband] sees me pick up a 20-pound sledgehammer, or sees me step on a ladder, grab a level, and off we go with the cabinets, it's amazing the respect I get.”
Fry says only twice has she been unable to overcome men's prejudice, but she says she's not offended. “I run 400 to 500 appointments a year,” so it's not a bad track record. “I learned that product knowledge would help me overcome the prejudice.” Last summer, Fry, who is 56, did her own “wood-rip double hung” job so she could go into anyone's home and be able to install a window. “When I'm in a home telling people about windows, I'm very believable.”
Double DutyAs in many male-dominated fields, women often work twice as hard to prove themselves. Rick Grosso, who has been conducting sales seminars and training since 1987, doesn't think men and women have a different sales style, but he does think that they are driven by different things. “When [women are] hired in this business, they're hired against the odds. They come in more determined and focused with a greater sense of purpose.”
Michael Stone, a business consultant for the construction industry and author of Mark-Up and Profit, says women work harder than men. “They pay closer attention in sales seminars and study harder. They write better contracts, have fewer cancellations, fewer problems on the job because they deal with the details of the job better than guys do.”
Grosso agrees and believes it's because “many of the men are trying [sales] out before they get a ‘real' job. Women take what they're doing very seriously. They're out there to prove they can do something.”
Bryan, of Blackdog, sees this in practice; four out of his seven salespeople are women. The women on his sales staff, he says, are “more careful in their proposals. The women's binders are, generally speaking, more detailed than the men's.”
Despite women's innate skills, few owners would send an employee on a sales call based on gender. Ben White, of Chicago's Benvenuti and Stein, says he pairs designers/ salespeople with clients based on the client's emotional makeup, the scope of work, and the designer's skill level. “It comes down to finding a personality that fits; [gender] is not one of the factors that crosses my mind.”
Perhaps good selling technique is just a matter of personal style, and to talk in gender generalities is not forward-thinking. But when Fry started out six years ago, she says she learned sales by going on calls with a male colleague. She copied everything he did and was, in her words, a miserable failure. “Once I overcame the reality of trying to mirror him word for word, movement for movement,” she says, “things snowballed. I just got better and better.”
In the end, though many women may have sales talent, they're not beating down the doors to enter the field. As Grosso says, although he's seeing more women in sales, “from zero to 1% or 2% is not a huge change.”
Perhaps it's fear — from both sides. Fry says she still faces teasing from male coworkers. Many male owners may not want to take a chance on hiring women they feel don't know enough about the construction side. But, says Kelly, whose firm has had women on its sales force since the 1970s, “there are [fewer instances] today where male clients can't believe women can have the skills and abilities to put together a remodeling project. That can be overcome pretty quickly by demonstrating ability. In some cases, we've probably lost a little business, but in the end we've gained a hell of a lot.”