Engaging With Women in Business

With women becoming more influential it's no surprise more businesses are looking to engage with women and encourage them to make recommendations about their products. Women are incredibly good at word-of-mouth marketing and are happy to recommend and endorse products when approached correctly.

So how do you engage with women in business?


Build relationships
Listen
Learn
Adapt

Relationships are important to all businesses, especially female ones. Trust grows from this and from that the relationships are strengthened. Businesses that successfully do business with women are those that listen. Many think the issues women in business have are simple, childcare and that is it. Sadly that assumption will have many business women heading for the hills - stereotypes and cliches have no place for women in business.

Listen and listen hard, clarify what you are hearing and then start the conversation - remember misconceptions can be costly.

From the listening aspect, comes the learning part and from the learning comes the adapting. Women buy from female friendly businesses and so do the men, elderly and disabled. If a retail store is female friendly then it's friendly to those in wheelchairs, those with disabilities and those that are older and need more support.

Men buy from male dominated stores. That's it. Just men, if you are looking to grow your customer bases you need to consider and listen to what women require.

If you are losing customers take a look at where your relationship building is happening, who it is happening with and where you are listening. If you are listening and not assuming, you will learn how to move forward and adapt and if you don't know how, there are plenty of business women on social media platforms who will lead the way.

Remember a win/win situation is vital, pitching to women without listening and engaging will result in then turning away from you and your products.

Sarah Arrow is editor of Birds on the Blog, the UK's leading blog for business women and the only UK entry in the Forbes top 100 websites for women. Stop by and see how these dynamic women have taken the word 'bird' back and how they are helping other women make a bigger impact in the business place.

Article (C) Sarah Arrow 2010

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