I got this article from my friend and PR Chick,  Jill Bode who used my article with a twist.  I really like it so I asked her if she would post it as my guest blogger.  If you are interviewing for a job, these are tips you might want to remember.

If you are using networking as one of the ways you look for a new job (and you should be), be sure that you aren’t leaving out 50% of the population.  You see the thing is, not everyone networks the same way.  In a recently released book Business Networking and Sex (not what you think) authors Dr. Ivan Misner, Hazel Walker and Frank DeRaffele took the topic of gender differences in networking head on.

1. Men want to know WHAT.  Men focus on establishing credibility as quickly as possible.  They like to list accomplishments and affiliations that show them in the most favorable light.  If you are a woman who is speaking to a male potential employer, take a page from the men and spend a few minutes highlighting yourself. It may feel a little uncomfortable at first, but it can help you gain credibility faster with men.

2. Women want to know WHO.  Women tend to focus on establishing visibility and this can take a little more time.  Women want to know how you are connected to other people and organizations and what things you may have in common.  As a man, this may feel a little unbusinesslike, but if you have a chance to talk about a possible job with a woman, take the time to ask her questions and try to see what connections you may both share.

3. But WHY?  The goal of networking in a gender-specific way is to use the best of both genders to help make strong connections that can aid in finding and landing your next job. So the next time you are at a networking event, try adapting your networking style to the gender of the person you are talking to and see what happens.

So if you are looking for a job the more that you understand about the person interviewing you the more likely you are to have success and maybe get the job.

It’s 4:00 p.m. and I have worked a long day, starting my day getting the family and myself out the door and on time to our respective place, now I am running this child to soccer, and that child to baseball, picking up the dry cleaning , rushing home to get the kids started on their homework for school tomorrow, do a couple of loads of laundry, put the dog out, answer the phone and pack lunches for tomorrow, when suddenly I hear, from the far side of the house, over the TV, the following statement, “Honey what’s for dinner?” I stop in my tracks and think, “What is wrong with him, it’s like having one more child in the house.”

 As a mom, wife and business owner, managing my time became extremely important. I was always seeking some sort of balance between the 3 areas of my life. Most of the time I felt like the Ring Master of a Three Ring Circus, with lots of clowns running around me out of control. I knew that networking was important for creating visibility for me and my business, but I also had commitments with the kids schools, PTA, with family members and my spouse. If I was going to a networking event I had to make sure family was cared for in my absence. If it was an evening meeting and I left the kids with Dad, I had to make sure that he had something ready to feed the kids, leave notes reminding them to get homework done and when I got home make sure that their breakfast was set out and lunch money on the table. Time permitting maybe a load of laundry before bed. It can be overwhelming and may cause many women to network less than their male counterparts.

Networking events take place everyday of the week, at many different hours, early morning meetings, lunch hour meetings and evening meetings. Finding the right time to make it all fit together can be a bit of a challenge. Here are some findings from the American Time use Survey about how men and women use their time, there are no shocking results and ladies, there is nothing here that you did not already know:

1. According to the survey, among full time workers men worked slightly longer than women an average of 8.2 hours versus 7.8 hours for women

2. Chores: On an average day, 20% of men did housework – such as cleaning or doing laundry, compared to 52% of women.

3. Meals: 37% of men did food prep or cleanup compared with 64% of women, indicating that men are more involved when it comes to eating. (Is anyone surprised here?)

Childcare: During an average weekday, women spent 1.2 hours providing physical care such a s bathing or feeding a child while men spent 23 minutes and on weekends women provided about an hour of physical care to household children while men spent about half an hour. (taken from: Battle of the Sexes www.mysalary.com )

The US Census Bureau in November 2009 states there are approximately 13.7 million single parents in the US and nearly 84% of those are single moms and 16% are fathers. This group will find that they are in need of more flexibility when it comes to the time that they are able to commit to networking. Today more than ever women are starting businesses as a way of having flexibility for their lives and their families.

The very fact that we are so busy being the Ring Master for our personal circus, it is vitally important that we make the best use of the time we have dedicated to our networking and business activities. One thing that both men and women can do to help themselves is to develop good systems around their networking activities. Spending time going deep into the network that they already have instead of running around meeting more and more new people.

So let me challenge you here ladies, and gentlemen, before you put on your best dress, gather up your business cards and head out the door to meet more new people, stop, take some time and figure out who is already in your network.   Then spend some time working on the network you have.  Take those relationships deeper before adding more.

Women do not like to talk about their accomplishments, they feel that it is bragging which is unlady like and impolite.  Ladies, there is a big difference between “bragging” and sharing your accomplishments, and the latter is important if you are going to network effectively with men.  Listen to men talk to one another when they are networking and you will hear them tell each other about what they do, who they know, what schools they have gone to, what deals they have closed, even what things they have accomplished.  Here is a comment left in our survey;

#280 When I meet with women to network and discuss business I find we spend about 90% of the time getting to know each other, we discuss family, who we are, our backgrounds , etc. then we spend about 10% of time talking about business.    When meeting with men I find we spend 10% of our time getting to know each other and 90% of our time talking about business.   Both approaches are effective, but I enjoy networking with women more.

When women hear men talking they often think they are egotistical and bragging. The reality is they are building credibility with one another, when they are duly impressed they go off and do business with each other.

 Women on the other hand speak to relate to each other, they are looking to learn more about the person, who are they, what do they have in common, do they like each other, do they want to help one another? When they feel they have a connection they go forward and build a relationship of support.

#220  In my experience, women tend to network intuitively, but they tend to focus on relationship issues.  Men tend to network by design, and they tend to focus on business issues.

#178 I find that most women who network are definitely more interested in developing a relationship and then business later.  Most men get right into the conversation of  ”so what do you do?”

 Now, put a man and a woman together at a networking event and you will find they completely miss the mark when they are communicating to one another. He is telling her all about his accomplishments while she is trying to find a way to relate, he walks a way wondering why women cannot just talk about business, and she is wondering why they have to be so egotistical! They have missed the connection.

 It is important that we learn to communicate with each other more effectively, follow the lead of the person speaking.  If they are speaking about what they have accomplished, respond in a similar fashion.  On the other hand if they are speaking in a relational manner, respond in a similar fashion. When we learn to adapt to one another we can more effectively connect and refer each other allowing us both to do more business.

I met with one of my clients yesterday and we talked about his target market, I had a conversation with a friend who runs her business and we talked about her target market.  I had a phone call with a potential referral partner  to discuss our referral strategy and we talked about our target market.

It seems that Target Market is an important subject, and one that every business should focus on clarifying.  So why does it seem so difficult, for businesses and solopreneurs to identify a target market?  Not having clarity on this topic creates a whole host of problems;

1.  You spend your marketing money using an ineffective shotgun approach that nets low value results.

2.  You find yourself networking at completely inappropriate places.  If I sell cars and I know that 65% of all new car purchasing decisions are made by women, then I am going to go network with women and other businesses who sell to women, not a room full of men.

3.  You end up having the wrong conversations with the wrong people at the wrong time.  Because you are looking for anybody who needs your services you waste a lot of time talking to everybody even when they are the wrong somebodies.

4.  You cannot develop a good referral partner and you end up with a lot of sources who are referring you low level, low value leads.  A good referral partner has the exact same target market as you do, you are focused and you have a strategy for developing referrals.

5.  You miss great opportunities because you are so busy taking care of the low value clients and customers that your high value opportunities are passed by.

10% of your clients create 80% of your income and 10% of your clients suck up 80% of your time and generate little income, why would you use shotgun approaches that only net you more of the latter?  If you focus on the top 10%, spend your time and money seeking more of them, the other 80% will just show up and you will be able to regularly clear out the bottom 10% thus freeing up your time to nurture the top 10%.

I encourage my clients to network in a variety of places based upon their target market. One suggestion I often give them is to sponsor an event then network with both the attendees and the other sponsors. My friend Jill Bode, with Designed Write PR, is my guest blogger this month. The following article is excellent information if you are looking to create quality visiblity for yourself and your company. Next time someone ask you to sponsor an event take a look at this article and decide if it is a good fit for you and your company.

The typical business is offered opportunities to sponsor various events and organizations. It can be difficult to decide if the proffered sponsorship is good investment and even harder to say “no” to a good cause, but as a businessperson, those types of decisions are paramount if you want to keep the doors open.

Here are seven ways you can identify if a sponsorship is a good fit for your company:

1) Does it put you in front of your key demographic? A sponsorship that puts you in front of a large group of potential prospects, is usually going to be the very best investment of your marketing dollars and will help you achieve that all-important visibility with your market.

2) What does your return on investment have to be in order to make the sponsorship profitable for you? If you need to set appointments with 50 people and the event only has 75 attendees, it may not be a good fit. Unless…

3) Is the event organizer willing to highly recommend your product or services to the attendees? If they are AND they have good credibility, they may help you get to your target and then some.

4) Will you be able to interact and talk to attendees during the event? On-site access is paramount if you are going to be able to create those initial impressions and start the sales process.

5) How many staff/fans/friends will you be able to bring along to the event with you as part of your sponsorship? These folks can be crucial to your success because they can say the great things about you that you could never say about yourself. The more people you can bring as part of your sponsorship, the more valuable it becomes.

6) Does the subject of the event deliver information or ideas that are useful to your company? If you get an opportunity to sell to your target market AND learn something new in the process, this a real home run for you and your business. Be sure to factor the expense of comparable training when figuring out your return on investment.

7) Will you be able to follow up with the event attendees? Is the organization willing to give you access and do you have time to reach out afterwards and convert attendees into customers? The day after the event is frequently when the profitability phase of the event begins, don’t forget to plan for it. After all profitability is the reason that you can stay in business.

Applying these seven criteria to the next sponsorship that is offered to you and your company will help you make profitable choices. And, although I may be biased, I think that the sponsorship opportunity below does a great job of meeting those seven criteria for a large number of companies, especially those who sell to women (and there must be a lot of those companies because 85 percent of all brand purchases are made by women*).

Click here to find out more about this limited sponsorship opportunity.

*figure provided courtesy of She-conomy.com

When I decided to write an article on Referral Mindset, I googled “referral mindset” and I got several pages of articles and videos from guys who talk about being in the habit of asking for referrals, getting referrals from your customers every time you sit down with them. Wowing your clients so they want to refer you. Those all seemed like strategies to me so I looked up “Mindset” by Carol Dweck and learned something completely different.

Mindsets are beliefs—beliefs about yourself and your most basic qualities. Think about your intelligence, your talents, your personality. Are these qualities simply fixed traits, carved in stone and that’s that? Or are they things you can cultivate throughout your life?

People with a fixed mindset believe that their traits are just givens. They have a certain amount of brains and talent and nothing can change that. So people in this mindset worry about their traits and how adequate they are. They have something to prove to themselves and others.

People with a growth mindset, see their qualities as things that can be developed through their dedication and effort. Sure they’re happy if they’re brainy or talented, but that’s just the starting point. They understand that no one has ever accomplished great things—not Mozart, Darwin, or Michael Jordan—without years of passionate practice and learning.

A referral mindset is the belief that you can be good at networking and the desire and willingness to learn more about referrals. We often think that people who are good at networking are just born with a networking or referral mindset, but the reality of it is this, if you want to get referrals, if you want to build a strong network, you have to be open to learning more about the process. Your referral mindset is your choice, you can let your self talk tell you that you are not good at it, or you can let your self talk encourage you to learn more and get good at it.

After surveying 12,000 men and women world wide about referrals and networking we learned that, knowing a person’s level of competency was the most important characteristic for referring a person for women, and
women more than men felt that they needed to try the persons product or service prior to giving them a referral.

This is key information for you to know if your referral strategy is to gain more referral from women to their network of other women. Many women feel that it is important to try your product or services prior to recommending or referring them, unfortunately we cannot try every persons products and services. This is one of the reasons that Angie’s list became so popular, it made it easy for women to read what their neighbors were saying about the people hired to do work for them. I was never a subscriber to the list but many of my friends were and I could call them and ask them who was getting the best reviews. Unfortunately, many of my friends have dropped their subscription as the list went public, but I know that I can still call my friends and they will give me their opinion on local service people they or their friends have used. I can count on it!

So, what can you do to help women trust your level of competency if they themselves have not used your product or service? Here are 3 Tips that will help you gain trust and word of mouth with women in your network.

1. Give them free samples, free trials or a one time reduced cost. Companies have been doing this for years when they are trying to engage females in a word of mouth campaign. Women will often do this with products between friends, I had a friend using a certain type of hair product called WEN that I was interested in but it was a little bit pricy so I was reluctant to order it with out trying it so Lindsay gave me some her to try out. Today I have a standing order for the WEN products. Companies like Mary Kay Cosmetics have always known that if you let them try it out first they will buy more later.

2. Get great testimonials! Ok, I know you know this one but are you doing it? Are asking for testimonials? When you get them what are you doing with them? Go beyond the written testimonial, while they are great to have, the best ones are the ones where you ask your clients if you could interview them while you tape the interview with a flip cam. Companies like 12StarsMedia make the flip cam video branding seamless, easy and cost effective. When I go to a website and see video after video of testimonials from customers, I am more likely to choose your services over a competitors and that is even higher if someone I know has used the service and spoken highly about it.

3. Don’t just sell to women, build a relationship. If you spend time building a relationship of trust and good will even if she has not used your services, she will still refer you. The second most important thing to a woman is your character, if you take the time to build a relationship versus just selling to her, you will allow her to get to know your character and that too will help her be comfortable carrying your word of mouth message.

If your referral strategy is to create a business that includes women as your target market, I would strongly encourage both men and women to take the time to understand the way women refer business and how they want to be referred. What influences them and what annoys them, women are relational and want to do business in a relational manner, are you prepared for that?

Women are growing businesses all over the world. As you can see from this chart, taken from BOLT Insurance Site,  the total impact globally is significant. When we did our global survey of 12,000 men and women, we learned a lot about how the sexes go about connecting and doing business differently. If men want to be able to do business with, connect, get and give referrals with women, they are going to have to learn some new techniques. It is important on both sides of the fence that we learn to “adapt” to one another’s style.

Three key area’s stood out from our survey that certainly impact our ability to network, connect and refer:

1. How men and women go about building relationships and doing business
2. How we go about learning to network
3. What is important to her when referring and what is important to him

The biggest issue is this, when ask “How do you learn your networking skills?” men only scored higher in one category, “On My Own”. It was clear that women were seeking education while men felt they already new it all.

Based on the statistics above, this could be a major issue for men who have not learned to adapt their networking strategy. Women are dominating the business world and they are making many of the financial decisions in businesses and at home. I am ever amazed at how many men tell me, “They don’t read books” and our survey showed they don’t take classes, so how are men going to learn to connect and do business with women the way that women want to do business? What will it cost men and women to not learn?

Flip side of the coin is this; Men still dominate the business world, ladies how are you learning to adapt your networking strategy?

Networking, one of the most popular activities in the business world.  It is written about, talked about, videos are done, trainings are held, books are written, and blogs blogs blogs all about networking.  Most of them say the same things over and over, leaving you with “Tips” and “Sure Fire Way” to network better. If you are networking as a way to grow your business, then you really want to create a strategy for developing referrals and business from you networking activities.

There are steps to creating a referral strategy for your business, and it starts with creating the foundation. Understanding why you are in business and what drives you to do what you do is key to having a business you love. When there is passion in what you do it comes through and people are attracted to you, they want to be around you and they are happy to refer business to you.

BITCH - Slang
a.  a malicious, unpleasant, selfish person, especially a woman.
b.  a lewd woman.
c. a person who whines

Does that word still bother you? Does the fear of being called a bitch or categorized as bitchy stop you from negotiating for the better deal, or getting things done the way you want or need them? Do you realize that one of the reasons that men make more money than women is because they negotiate more pay when they are hired and women don’t?

I read an article in Forbes magazine; Want to Grow the Economy? Change Four Attitudes About Women Entrepreneurs, following is one of those attitudes,

Women’s assertiveness is perceived as “bitchiness.”
No one likes to be a “bitch,” but when women leaders make tough decisions, the response is critical and personal. When men make tough decisions, they are “strong” or “assertive” but women … that “b” word crops up. “If you want everyone to like you, you will have a hard time doing what is necessary,” Elting says.

I was sharing this article with several female friends many of them made this comment, “women use the term Bitch for other women even more that men do.” Ouch! What does that say about us?

I have two daughters, I taught them at a very young age that the words like bitch were used as a way to control or hold them back. One day my daughter came home from school, she was suspended for decking a young man,when I asked her why she said it was because he called her a Bitch. I looked at her quizzically, she shrugged and said, “Oh, he had not earned that right yet!” My daughters do not let that word bother them, they know that whatever opinion that someone else has about them is not their problem, it is the problem of the opinion holder. They are strong self assured women who do not mind taking a stand and speaking up for themselves or others.

Being successful in your business and your life means that you cannot let your need for approval get in the way of your need to do business. As a woman I have as much right and power to negotiate better pay and better deals as a man does. When I was in China I learned just how powerful and important negotiating really was, they negotiate for everything! Women are hardball negotiators in many countries and there is no reason at all that we cannot do the exact same thing.

If I choose not to use that skill because I am worried about being seen as pushy or bitchy that is my weakness and I should not keep complaining about how men get better deals and better pay. Men expect to negotiate it is just a competition, they don’t take it personal, and they don’t worry about being called a “pushy bastard.”

So ladies, if you want to make more money, sell more business, or get a pay raise,  learn the art of negotiation and stop worrying about the names you might be called, your need for approval will always hold you back.  Don’t let someone else define you.