While we can’t say for sure that saleswomen are better than salesmen, or if women, in general, are better in business than men. I can tell you that, in my experience working in different companies across multiple countries and industries, the top producers have always been saleswomen.
Now, just to be clear. I’m NOT saying that men are not good salespeople. Of course, they are. There are so many great salesmen. In fact, one of my best managers was a man. He’s actually the one who taught me a lot of the sales techniques that I teach in my online courses and that I took and added a Muna touch to it, as well as a lot of things that I learned over the years.
So, there are many great salesmen. But our question today is:
Are WOMEN better at sales than MEN?
According to Forbes, a well-known American business magazine and a great source for news and business updates:
“70% of women typically reach their quota as opposed to only 67% of men that reached their quota.”
And while it might seem like it’s not a big difference, but it shows that saleswomen are taking the lead. And for good reasons.
Saleswomen have 3 distinct advantages in sales:
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Listening capabilities:
Generally speaking, women have a better listening capability. Which gives them a natural advantage at sales. In my sales courses, trainings and videos, one of the things that I talk about a lot is that you should be listening more than you speak in order to become a top producing salesperson.
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Higher EQ:
Women have higher Emotional Intelligence. This is, yet, another natural advantage that women have. And what this means is that women can regulate their emotions better. For example, in a selling situation a female can react to a negative statement by retracting and coming up with a creative solution, instead of arguing and entering into a defensive state. As a man may do depending on his personality. Which is, generally, not going to work in your favor.
Furthermore, women can pick up on non-verbal cues much better. Because, a higher EQ means also better non-verbal communication and body language skills. Most of the communication in sales and in life, in general, is non-verbal. Forbes says:
That means that the majority of communication is, indeed, non-verbal. And if you are not picking up on body language cues and tonality and all of the other aspects of non-verbal communication, you’re missing out on the majority of the conversation. That’s why this aspect is a huge part of being a really good salesperson.
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Women are good in collaboration:
Collaboration now is the way forward in sales and in business. Women are more willing to collaborate. Whether internally, with different departments, or externally, with prospects. Women tend to collaborate more quickly and easily than men.
Now, let’s come back to my experience. Again, what I have noticed in all of my 18 years of experience in sales and sales training is that the top producers in the financial industry, telecommunications, marketing, advertising, B2B and B2C, were always females. And they all had 3 Key similarities:
3 Key qualities that Saleswomen have:
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Persuasion:
On a general scale, the decision makers in every industry tend to be men. And from a psychological perspective, this gives another natural advantage to women in dealing with men, in a business sense. Simply, because of the way our minds work and the way women get men to do certain things and, if you are a smart saleswoman, persuade them that it was their decision.
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Women work harder:
You hear this phrase a lot: “Sales is a numbers game”. And it’s absolutely true. Because, to be a successful salesperson, you can either have really good skills, or if you are in the beginning of your career, you can just make more calls. Speaking to more prospects will allow you to set up more meetings, put yourself in front of more potential clients and increase your conversions.
Women, just simply, put in more work. They don’t necessarily have better skills (which a lot of them do), but they just work harder and put in more effort. Which results in higher sales.
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Women are more persistent:
This comes from a variety of reasons. Women takes on natural roles that require more persistence and dedication. They are moms that have to be persistent with their kids, and they face a lot of different scenarios in life where they have to be persistent.
In sales this is critical! So, if you can do it the right way, the more persistent you are, the more sales you are going to make.
You can find this in the follow up course that I teach on sales society, where I ask the question “when do you stop following up?” for which the answer is you don’t. You should never stop following up. Because, there’s a lot of salesmen and saleswomen that will stop following up. When in reality, if you want to be at the top of the leaderboard and be the best salesperson that you can be, you have to be very persistent.
And with this we come to a conclusion to the question:
Are WOMEN better at sales than MEN?
We can safely say, according to Forbes magazine and What I noticed in my experience, yes. Women make better salespeople.
You can check out the video I made for this topic. Or, if you want to explore more videos that will give you sales tips:
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10 Smart Open-Ended Sales Questions
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Cold Calling Tips To Boost Your Phone Sales
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How To Get More Price Reductions in Real Estate (Proven Techniques!)
And if you are interested in learning the 20 sales secrets that will make you take your sales game to the next level you can grab a copy of your FREE E-Book ($17.99 Value absolutely free).
