Small Office, Home Office Information

I read some interesting statistics the other day that made me wonder if small business people actually realise who they are selling to. Are your real clients - as opposed to the people who just come and have a look - men or women?

In America it’s been found that while lots of men look it is actually the females who buy and that includes the big ticket items. If you run an electrical store you might find that there are a lot more men in the store than women but the men are only looking while it is the women who are actually doing the buying.

Of course, once you know who is actually buying your product, you will then be able to better target your marketing and approach the people who have come in to your business.

One of my daughters, a highly skilled single young woman, went to buy a washing machine recently. She went in her lunch hour from work and a male co-worker just happened to accompany her. When a salesman approached them my daughter enquired about a washing machine and the salesman showed her and her co-worker a number of models.

But the salesman could not handle dealing with a female, he addressed all his comments to my daughter’s co-worker who had just come along for the ride. Even when my daughter told him that it was her who was interesting in buying the salesman continued to address the male co-worker.

Needless to say, my daughter did not buy a washing machine in that store.

Are you missing sales because you’re talking to the wrong person?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 at 10:24 am and is filed under Attitude, Small Business Communications, Small Business Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.