According to a recent survey, women are the primary decision maker in purchasing decisions in 85% of households. Are you listening to them?
What they really, really want.
‘What Women Want’ was a 2000 movie about Mel Gibson as a chauvinistic marketing executive who, after a freak accident, discovers that he can hear what women think.
Obviously played out for its rom-com potential, the film also makes a valid point. Women are different to men and they behave differently when they are buying things.
And the other point that it makes is that the important thing is not about how you talk to them, but how you listen to them.
And it is important because women hold the purse strings.
Women are the primary decision maker in purchasing decisions in 85% of households. They make 75% of decisions about buying new homes – and if that’s true then you can be sure that make a lot of the decisions about improving an existing home be that with a pool, a spa or a sauna.
In fact, according to the survey, they control 80% of all household spending.
What makes a woman unlike a man?
OK. Women behave differently to men, but in what ways?
Building relationships and customer service are much more important to women.
Great customer service is essential to building and growing your business but it is doubly so when seen through the eyes of a woman. They take things personally.
The female consumer will spend more time gathering information and shopping around. She will want to build a closer relationship with you and your business before she signs a contract or hands over a credit card.
Women are easily put off by a ‘hard sell’ approach.
Women will talk to their friends and ask for advice and recommendations more so than men will so social media is an important environment for your business to be well regarded in.
Just because women are a different sex, don’t make the mistake of being sexist. No one likes being stereotyped or talked down to.
What do women think about..?
But surely, we are getting it right already, aren’t we?
If you Google ‘what do women think about sauna’, or spa or even swimming pools, you get some rather worrying results.
Those results pages appear to be full of blogs, articles, posts and forum chat about perceived problems with those three sectors of the wet leisure business.
There is talk of health risks, issues with pregnancy, worries about body-image and concerns about etiquette and behaviour.
Admittedly some of these comments are focussed on public spas, saunas and pools but it still indicates some of the concerns that women obviously have.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you should start your sales pitch by saying, ‘No one has ever died from using one of these hot tubs’, but it might suggest that, when selling to a female customer, you point out the quality of the spas filters rather than focussing on what a pretty colour the shell is.
