The Only Woman in the Room

For most of my business career I’ve been the only woman in the room.  When I started selling mainframes back in the day – I was the only woman sales rep in my company.  When I moved into marketing, I was the only woman in the team. When I started my own consulting business in the late ‘80s, I was the only woman in the executive team meetings or the boardroom for my clients.  It was a man’s world and I learned how to live in it.

Fast forward to today. I’m still usually the only woman in the room.

Some folks say women are discriminated against in managerial and executive positions. Personally I’ve rarely felt that was true.  Sure, a few people have been less than respectful to me, but that’s true outside of business as well. In my 30+ year career, I’ve usually been treated with respect as my clients trust me to drive revenue growth for their businesses.

Some folks say women are discriminated against in managerial and executive positions. Personally I’ve rarely felt that was true.

Yep, I’m one of those rare women in the boardroom. I choose to be there as an executive consultant. To this day I enjoy working in those male dominated rooms. I suppose I’m somewhat of an exception.

Most women choose to simply move on.

Why Do Women Leave?
Some women leave the work force to have families. They choose to stay home and raise their kids. Then they find other ways to create business opportunities for themselves. Some of us, like me, leave to start our own businesses. I did just that when I was 27 years old.  I wanted the freedom of being my own boss.  But then I came back, on my own terms. Some women get frustrated with the corporate politics and leave.  Some don’t see an opportunity for advancement and so they leave.  Regardless of the reason we women leave, the majority of us do leave.

When we leave, it’s the corporations that suffer. Here’s why.

The Diversity of the Female and Male Brain
In her brilliant books, Dr Louann Brizendine* paints a detailed picture of the differences between the female and male brain. Here’s a summary of how those differences begin.

• Every brain is female in utero until 8 weeks. Female is nature’s default setting. At 8 weeks, if a burst of testosterone occurs, the brain will become male.  If it’s doesn’t happen, the brain remains female.

• That burst of testosterone dramatically changes the makeup of the now male brain.  That testosterone kills off cells in the communication and emotional centers and grows more cells in the sex and aggression centers.

• A female brain continues to grow a significantly larger communication and emotional center than the male brain, fueling empathy, intuition and more.

When we leave, it’s the corporations that suffer.

Because of our larger communication and emotional centers, females read facial expressions, hear vocal nuances, sense what’s happening in individuals and groups and create strong one-on-one social relationships.

Male brains are wired by their aggression and sexual brain centers to focus on making things happen, getting to the goal, defense of territory, physical strength and general domination of those around them.

That certainly explains a lot, now doesn’t it?

It’s the Business That Loses
I think we need both the male and the female brain’s wiring to create a balanced culture that drives business success. As women leave the corporate world for their own pursuits I have to ask:

Does communication play a key part in business success? Team success? Market success?

Is empathy important in creating customer loyalty? Employee loyalty? Team collaboration?

Is seeing the reality of a situation, sensing the unspoken truth, important in business?

I believe the answer is “YES!” to all of the above. Which is why I’ll keep on being the only woman in the room. And asking other women to join me there. Now more than ever, corporations, businesses and our modern world need the skills we bring with our oh-so female brains.

* I highly recommend you read both The Female Brain and The Male Brain. These books are amazing studies for ourselves, our kids, our teams and more.  Click here to learn more.


Photo Credit from Flickr
Rebel Brown (4 Posts)A masterful agent of change, for over 25 years Rebel has inspired, coached and empowered over 250 global organizations to ultimate performance and profitable market advantage. Rebel blends the power of neurosciences with her deep business expertise to guide executive and corporate clients to unleash their ultimate performance potential. She has been featured in First Business TV, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider and Business Week. Her best selling business book, Defy Gravity, is any leaders’ guide to breakout growth. Rebel’s Rebelations blog is read by thousands weekly. She is a an NSA and a Vistage International speaker, acting as a keynote speaker and leading workshops globally. She also was named one of the Top 100 Women in Computing. Besides speaking and writing, Rebel has vast consulting experience in shifting corporate perspectives to create breakout strategy, positioning for advantage and profitable growth. She works with US and European venture firms to successfully fund and launch companies. She also ran a consulting practice in Paris for two years, bringing European firms to the United States. Rebel is also the founder and director of the Unstoppable U Foundation, a non-profit program committed to guiding kids to know that they are born to be Unstoppable.

The Future of Social Selling

By David Howell

 

Social media has transformed retailing. The question that corporations are now asking is how will this channel evolve in the future?

 

There is no denying that social media has had a profound impact on the sales funnel. The power and influence that consumers now have is unprecedented in the history of retailing. Brand owners seeing this shift have been quickly attempting to evolve their businesses into social enterprises that pay close attention to the new relationships that social media has delivered to their companies – some with more success than others. 

What has become abundantly clear is that at the heart of this new retail landscape is how consumer behaviour has changed. Understanding these changes is now at the heart of brand development that is being played out across the current social media platforms. And accepting that ‘current’ is an important aspect to appreciate is key, as social media is in constant flux.

In their report for Hearsay Social Forrester state: “The social ecosystem is no longer a single, unified set of tools competing for the same resources and users — and it really never was. Instead, advanced businesses focus their investments in social tools by what phase of the customer life cycle the tool facilitates, in addition to the business objective for interactions with their end customers. Sales professionals do not use social channels in the same way that marketers do, and therefore need their own set of capabilities to succeed today.”

 Marketing To The Individual 

One clear component of the future of social selling is that even more focus on the individual will be required. The broadcast model for marketing campaigns has moved aside as social media has asserted a one-to-one relationship with brands and their consumers.What is now important is that the realignment of the sales funnel and how social media has impacted on its lifecycle is appreciated and acted upon by all corporations. In addition, the future of social selling will mean that sales, marketing and PR departments work increasingly closely together, as they all have a stake in how their businesses utilise social media within their sales channels. 

However, Forrester did point out: “The sales professionals that we spoke to were relatively dismissive of corporate social marketing and its ability to help them close more business. While Forrester has seen many successful social marketing efforts that track their ROI through increased lead volume and conversion, those successes were not recognized by the sales teams in this study. Sales either had no visibility into what corporate marketing was doing, common for sales agents, or didn’t know how marketing could directly help win more business at all, common among sales enablement professionals and sales managers.” 

This lack of transparency and cooperation must also change as they are at the foundation of the future development of social selling. Understanding how social media impacts on each stage of the buying cycle is of paramount importance, as often the key stakeholders in the buying cycle use social media for different outcomes and at different points in the consumer buying cycle. Ratifying these relationships to create a seamless customer journey is clearly an important aspect of social selling as it develops over the next few years. 

The future of social selling will also increasingly be visual. A number of reports have concluded that video content and also images are powerful marketing tools that consumers are using as touch points when they are looking for goods or services to buy. The exponential growth of Pinterest is testament to this trend. Corporations will need to think increasingly visually with their marketing efforts to lock into a trend that shows little sign of slowing.

Soft Metrics

Another core aspect of social selling that will develop rapidly as this channel matures is how these relationships are tracked from initial contact to conversion. Often the social channel is lamented as being weak when tracking of ROI is concerned. The tools that are available at the moment are nascent, but will rapidly evolve to offer the kind of data that corporations are looking for. 

There will always be an intangible ‘soft’ metric that must be considered when conversion statistics are considered, but brands are understanding that the hard application of data when coupled with sales statistics won’t give highly accurate ROI, as social selling often relies on a number of intangibles, such as the impact that the so-called ‘recommendation economy’ can have on the performance of a sales channel. 

In addition, the future of social selling will mean a quantification of what it means to be a follower on Twitter, or the actual value of a like on Facebook. How a corporation’s customers interact with its brand and the iteration of those values across social networks will be important to build into the fabric of all marketing campaigns.

What is clear for all brands to see is that social shopping has yet to reach its peak. As the rules of engagement and best practice continue to change as the social media networks themselves evolve, brands can feel lost as they wrestle to understand how social shopping can be managed within their sales funnels. A loser grip on traditional values practices is the key to success in the social shopping space. Listen before acting is a mantra to adopt.
 

Ten questions to ask before expanding overseas

By: Aliza Dizik

Deciding when to go global is a tough call for entrepreneurs. They may be tempted by opportunities in hot markets like China, India or Brazil, but could risk venturing abroad before they’re fully prepared.

“Many companies expand too quickly,” says Jon Fjeld, executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Duke University. While selling overseas extends your company’s reach, he says, you don’t want to move into international markets too soon and use resources you need to continue growing on your home turf.

Here are 10 key questions to ask before going international: 

Have I built a solid foundation at home? Make sure your business is stable on a day-to-day basis before pursuing overseas markets, Fjeld says. For instance, you should determine whether your business could function well in your absence. Companies also “need to have the distribution running smoothly enough so that they don’t have to focus on it constantly,” Fjeld says. 

 

Do I have the bench strength for international expansion? You will need to assign one or two senior employees to your international effort. So, you need to determine whether you can afford to move people from their current responsibilities, as well as whether they bring–or can quickly develop–the necessary skills for overseas sales and marketing. “At minimum, you’ll need someone who is going to be accountable for the export sales part of the business,” says Tom Moore, deputy assistant secretary for international operations at the U.S. Commercial Service, the country’s trade promotion arm, in Washington D.C. 

Will I find the talent I need in another country? If you decide to expand, finding local talent can be a challenge. Some countries simply do not have enough of the skilled labor companies may need. You also will be competing with established companies that know where to find talent and how to recruit local candidates. One potential source: local educational institutions such as engineering programs and business schools. 

 How will I need to adapt to the local culture? Some countries such as France and Japan expect companies to adapt to the local culture, says Carl Theobald, chief executive of Avangate in Redwood City, Calif., which provides e-commerce capabilities to small and medium-size companies. That may mean customizing your product or service to meet local customers’ tastes. At the very least, you will need to put your marketing message in the local language and make sure the meaning translates correctly.

 

Do I understand the cultural implications of the sales process? Closing a deal abroad can be a vastly different experience than you’re probably used to, says James Hunt, adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. “Some cultures struggle to say, ’No, we aren’t interested’ in a product or service, which means you can have an extremely long and costly sales process that never leads to a sale.” Such behavior is especially prevalent in China and the Middle East, he says. To avoid this problem, look for customers who have bought similar items or services in the past, Hunt says. And sometimes it’s better to cut off talks if they lag for too long.

Have I sized up the local competition? Understanding your competitors abroad can provide insights into how – and whether – to expand. But many companies don’t take time to figure out whether similar products and services are already available in a new market and what they would need to offer to compete successfully. Spending time abroad and speaking with potential customers can help to avoid costly mistakes.

 

Do I need an international partner? For many companies, it’s critical to find a local partner when expanding overseas, Mr. Moore says. Partners can help facilitate sales, while keeping costs down for the home office. Forming a partnership takes time – often, a year or longer – and requires plenty of due diligence to find the right fit, Mr. Moore says.

Am I financially able to sustain an overseas expansion? Expanding internationally requires a startup-like period that’s longer than many entrepreneurs anticipate. “You have to expect to lose money for a while,” Fjeld says. So, you not only need enough capital to make the initial investment, but you also should have a long-term financial plan in place, he says. You will likely need to update the plan to reflect actual revenue and expenses as you ramp up in the new market. “It’s not something you are going to turn a profit on right away; you have to be there for the long haul,” Mr. Moore says.

Where’s the potential for red tape? Expanding beyond the domestic market can mean lots of extra paperwork, especially for medical and technology companies. With such a variety of regulations surrounding exports, it’s important to understand what’s required for your particular industry before attempting to expand abroad.

 

Should I simply expand my online presence? For some companies with a strong website, it may not be necessary to establish a physical presence abroad. You may be able to offer overseas shipping and expand payment options without the hassle of extensive tax regulations. “Selling online through an e-commerce partner with international capabilities is far easier and much less costly than building a local presence,” Mr. Theobald says. But at least in some markets, you would need to develop websites in another language that accept the local currency. Online shoppers “are more likely to buy when the experience is in their local language [and] local currency,” Mr. Theobald says.