Men insult each other, but they don’t mean it, Women compliment each other and they don’t mean it either. I found that quote on my Facebook wall one day and I thought, wow, how profoundly true that statement really is. The last few weeks I have been thinking about how women treat each other, the back biting, gossiping, undermining way that we treat each other has a long term profound affect upon women as a whole and maintains a man’s view of women in the work place and in business.

 Women are often guilty of Crab mentality, and it is not just a corporate phenomenon. I see this mentality happen everyday with women business owners and on more than a few occasions I have even been the victim of the ladies in the crab pot. In all likelihood I have even been a participant in the crab pot.  Just as one woman rises to the top, all the rest of the women reach up and pull her back down.

 Women are often the first to criticize and sabotage one another. When one female business owner has a little success, others will pull her down, withhold connections, referrals and even ignore her. Recently after looking at a list of female entrepreneurs who had won awards for achievement, other women were being petty and unkind about the winners. With comments like “She must have nominated herself” “She is always in it for the glory” “She gets everything like she is the only female business owner out here” and “There are others who are so much more deserving that her.” Susan Tardanico had this to say in Forbes Magazine,  the same behaviors that wound and traumatize us as girls are alive and well in the workplace, undermining our career success.

 We worry that one women business owner is going to get further a head in her business than we are, so we don’t choose her to do our business with, we don’t give quality referrals to her so she can grow her business with our connections, we don’t build her up, talk her up, we don’t help her climb that ladder of success.  Worse yet, when she does succeed we will pay lip service to her success, but we will not show up to celebrate with her and we will not give her the credit for hard work to get where she is, we will just compare ourselves to her, find ourselves lacking and talk about how lucky she is.

If we are going to evolve as a gender, if we want to be taken seriously, if we are going to change the world,  then we all have to step into the space of change.

Correct yourself first – if you hear a fellow women business owner being demeaned or negatively talked about, don’t participate. Set the example and refuse to participate, leave the conversation. When we participate in running down another woman we do damage to ourselves and all women. We keep the stereotype alive.

Speak up – take a stand for other women. When you stand by and allow others to ruin the reputation or spread gossip, it is the same as participating in it. “Evil wins when good men stand quietly by.”  It is by our silence that others are allowed to continue.  Speak up and remind the ladies that it could be them that others are talking about.  Then offer 2-3 positive things to the conversation.

 Support – Build relationships, make connections, do business with and give quality referrals to the women in your community. Promote their business, show up at their events and give support whenever possible. Stop talking about supporting and start doing it.

Celebrate – Stand up and speak out for the success of other women, even small successes celebrated build spirit and momentum.

Pass on the information, change the conversation, we are women, we have the power to change the world,  but it starts with us.  We may not be able to change all women and how they behave, but we can certainly change how we show up and set the example

Are you a lazy networker?  I find that most people who are networking for the purpose of getting referrals are actually pretty lazy. Few people do any real homework on their target market, have no clue who they want to do business with or be connected to, have no systems for tracking, and most never even bother to follow-up.

There are so many things that you have to do to get good referrals, but somehow there is a belief that if you run around and spew enough knowledge about what you do, then people will trust you and send you business. It is lazy person networking. Here is a list of things you must do to be able to get quality referrals from your network.

1. You must know your Target Market.  If you do not know who you want to do business with then you cannot expect others to know either, most of my clients find this the hardest thing to come up with. Anybody who needs,  is not a target market. Hire a professional to help you
2.  You must be willing to go out and find referrals for your network. Everyone I meet just wants to spend all their time talking about themselves and their business. It’s easier to talk about me then it is to learn enough from my network members and talk about them.
3.  Track your activities, your time, your money, and your results. If you don’t track how will you know what is working and what is not. Who is giving you referrals, when was the last time that you talked to your network members, how many referrals have you passed to your network? All of these are very important things for you to know about your activities.
4.  You might have to make it to meetings, some in the morning, afternoon or evening. So many people do not want regular appointments just in case they don’t feel like getting up and going. Heck it is easier to sit at home and network online, I can do that in my jammies after all.
5. Develop a system for follow-up, stop being lazy and just using email. Step out and make yourself memorable. Drop a post card in the mail,or mail a thank you note. It takes a little more time and work, but it does pay off.
6.  Get educated about good networking and referrals. Most people believe that if they walk around and give out enough cards and talk enough about what they do, they are building credibility. Nothing could be further from the truth! There are programs being offered all the time that will improve your ability to make more money, but few people are willing to commit the time or the money to go learn more so they can earn more. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told by business professionals say they don’t read.

 Trust is the first step in the referral process, you have to slow down and build trust. Yea that’s what I said. slow down! Take the time to get to know me, what I want, how you can help me and what is important to me. When you do that, you will find out that I in return will feel better about you and want to learn more. Trust and credibility cannot be rushed, it takes time and work….oops there is that word again.

]]> http://hazelmwalker.com/are-you-a-lazy-networker-6-things-you-should-do/feed/ 0 http://hazelmwalker.com/women-are-the-most-valuable-target-market-in-the-financial-industry/ http://hazelmwalker.com/women-are-the-most-valuable-target-market-in-the-financial-industry/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:00:15 +0000 Hazel http://hazelmwalker.com/?p=1535

Men and women invest differently, I know you are shocked by that statement right?  Probably not!  The following is from an article in the Chicago Tribune. 

In the financial services industry, the default language is male-speak. Women do not feel served. You look at the advertisements, lingo, acronyms. Even the client-engagement and retention process (sales) is a male model.

According to LearnVest.com, 87 percent of women would like to work with a financial adviser, but only 17 percent do. A big part of the reason is … women don’t meet the asset threshold to work with the advisers, so they get disenfranchised.

Several of the big companies have raised their thresholds recently, alienating even more women while they are spending their marketing dollars on the male market.

So, I went to my friend, TJ Couzens, of BrandX,  a market research firm who  researches the female market, to ask his opinion.  TJ wrote the following post in which he discusses the importance of  financial companies going after the female market more effectively.

Women control ALL of the purse strings. Women make over 68% of investment decisions. In the next decade, they will control over 2/3 of the total wealth in the U.S.

Consider this fact of high-end investing. All male investment clubs get an annual rate of return of 8% while all female investment clubs get an annual rate of return of 22%. (Source: Brand X Research, Investment Survey Analysis). Men are in it for the game while women are in it for the long haul. For men, it’s all about “me”. For women, it’s all about “we”. They invest not for their own wealth, but for the sole purpose of taking care of loved ones and friends.

In the area of retention, men change brokers about every 3 years, while women, if treated well, stay with their brokers for 10+ years (Source: Brand X Research). One of the reasons for this is men like bragging rights for great stock performance, so they will jump around if their portfolio is lagging behind their buddies. This leads to high client turnover for brokers. Women, on the other hand, invest based on her relationship with her broker. If they earn her trust and confidence, she will seek their advice and stay loyal because the relationship is valued more than bragging rights.

Another reason why all financial institutions should woo women is in the area of referrals. Men will refer their financial institution to 2.6 people on average. Women, if treated well, will refer you to 21 of her friends. This is huge and is worth billions of dollars over the long term. Right now the investment industry is doing a poor job of retaining women. According to a recent research study by Brand X Research, women only stay with their current broker 5-6 years. The cause of this is too many brokers cater to the husband and pay almost no attention to the wife.

What does this all mean? In essence, it means most financial institutions and brokers are spending marketing dollars on the wrong audience. They are sending out the wrong message. They still believe men make up most of the investment community and their marketing approach confirms this. It is male, ego driven themes based on competition and winning. Instead, they need to try to win over the women market through communicating, relationship building and mutual respect.

Companies need to realize they are losing by spending marketing dollars trying to win over male investors because it’s cheaper to do so. Men are easily persuaded, but are not loyal. You will always have a hole in your sales bucket. By marketing to women, you will spend more marketing dollars because she is harder to convince, but, once convinced, she is extremely loyal and will invest more money with you over the long-term. Remember 2.6 vs. 21 and 3 years vs. 10+ years. Who would you rather have?

If Financial Planners want more referrals they need to have a better understanding of the female market.  Changing your marketing message is not enough.

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?

Ladies we all know that building a strong business network is key to being the most successful in life and in business. Building a strong network requires two things, time and education, with the key requirement being time. After all it takes time to invest in our education.

Here is one tip to help you, learn to have a strong No! No, I cannot serve on the PTA Board this year. No, I cannot chair that fundraiser. No, I cannot take on that project at work. No, I cannot be the carpool mom for this activity. It is better to have a strong No than it is to have a weak Yes. A weak Yes ruins your credibility, and shows you as someone who only half commits. A strong No shows that you know you limitations and how to give effectively.

Take a look at what you are trying to accomplish, do your activities really support that? Instead of taking on new activities, take a look at the things that you are already doing and figure out how they are supporting you in building that network that you need. How much time are you spending at unproductive events? Would your time be better spent going to events where you know you will be able to connect with people already in your network? Do you really need to add more people right now?

Next ask yourself, how much time have you set aside for your personal and professional development? If you want to build a network of people who help you build a business you love, you need to set aside time to learn the skills it takes to build the relationships that help to build a business and life you love.

This week, take time to list all of your activities, how are they serving you? How are you serving them? Which of them do you need to give up? Where in your life, are you doing things out of a sense of duty versus a passion for the activity? Where in your life are you not really giving 100%?

When you do that, you will know what you need to give up and what you should say No to.

Business networking is about building relationships and who is better at building relationships than women. When it comes to networking there are a few things that women are just naturally better at then the men. There are things they can learn from us, just as there are things we can learn from them. In this blog, I am listing the 3 things that women do better than the men. The following blog will list the 3 things that men do better than women and the third in the series will discuss how we can learn from each other. So, before you men get all upset, be patient, you time to shine will be next, ladies first!

1. Women build deeper relationships with the people they meet than men do. That is not to say that men do not build relationships, they do, but they do it differently and they define it differently. This really plays out when men retire, once they are no longer working they have few close friends to do things with. Good networking is about building good relationships.

2. Women are excellent carriers of word-of-mouth. Women will sing your praises when you do a good job for them, and typically they are less likely to refer someone if they have not used or seen the quality of your work or product. When they do, no one will pass on the information better than a female.

3. Women by nature are collaborators, they build community. They will rally a group together to accomplish a goal or task. Where men are often lone wolves, women like to do things in groups. This plays very well in the business networking arena, it allows more people to win, when they are all working together.

 All of these are good traits, and each of them have a downfall. While it is important to build relationships, women often forget that they are building business relationships. Relationships that are meant to help, to be leveraged for business on both sides. We spend a lot of time building the relationships in the hope that they will do business with us, but we think that just because someone knows what we do, they will choose to use us when the need arises. That is a belief that often holds us back from creating the success in our business networking that we are looking for.

Next up: Three things that men do better than women!

I went to Ireland in February to speak at a conference, I connected with some of my friends there, and made many new friends, last week I was in Australia, training a group of franchise owners.  In August I will be in Africa working with a team of franchise owners, and in October, I am going to go hang out with friends in London, Paris and Scotland.   Ten years ago I would not have believed that I could know someone on every continent of the globe, but today, I do.  It makes for a diversely rich network, allowing me to learn, connect and travel the world.

One of the benefits of traveling,  teaching and learning is my appreciation of my very own country, to be able to see the US through the eyes of those outside the US.  To travel the way that I do in the world never would have happened if I had not decided to be intentional about the creation of my network.  Every single opportunity that I have had to travel has been the result of my network, they have referred me over and over to others.  They extend invitations and make me feel at home in a foreign place.

Today it is not hard at all to build a global network.  With social media sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and  Twitter and international face to face organizations like Rotary, Toastmasters and BNI the world continues to feel as if it is shrinking.  When you meet someone on the other side of the world who knows someone you know, it hits you, just how connected we all are!

Here are a few things that you can do to increase your global connections and create contacts around the world.

1.  Social Media – Get active on sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and start connecting globally. These are the big three. But, I have found there are more region specific sites like Ecademy that are heavily used by Europeans, so I am able to have more conversations and stay up on world topics by participating there. There are also sites that are more heavily influenced by Asian participants too.

2.  Attend international trade shows and conferences. Attending workshops with people from all over the world allows you to connect over a common interest. This opens the door for future conversations and connection. Don’t forget to follow up with the people that you meet! I am a member of the National Speakers Association and one of my best connections came from the New York Conference where I was able to meet with Lindsay Adams, President of the International Speakers Association. I had the opportunity to co-present with him while I was in Australia because of the connection we made at conference.

3.  When the opportunity to take a program comes up go to a city with international influence. Given the opportunity I prefer to go to Chicago because I know that I am more likely to meet people from all over the world than I would if I stay in my own town. I have made several great contacts using this tactic alone.

4.  Get involved in international organizations like BNI, Toastmasters and Rotary where you can connect globally while doing business locally. These are organizations that have large global memberships and a common cause, they encourage you to stop in and visit the local chapters when you are in the area.

It is a big world out there, but when you know someone everywhere you go, it makes it small and cozy.  You are comfortable going to a part of the world you have never been to when you connect with someone you know there.  It is wonderful to be able to learn about other cultures, languages, styles, history, and yes even food.  The opportunity to build your global network is better than it ever has been, you just have to step out, and do it!

Time to Let the Fear Go

I have been reading a book called, She Wins, You Win by Gail Evans. I started reading it 2 years ago, and picked it back up as a source of my new book, Business Networking and Sex, Not what you think. and I remembered what I like about this book, it confirms so much of what I have believed was happening with women in business and the work place.   We women are terribly competitive with one another, and we are fraught with a variety of fears.   This one fear caught my attention since it is the very nature of what I teach and work on with women in my programs.

FEAR: If you build relationships with other women hoping that you will profit from them you are being manipulative.

REALITY: Excerpted…Women are struggling with this concept because we think that using a friend to achieve some positive result in business is nasty, immoral, and manipulative. We do not understand that having a close friend help us make a business connection is a routine favor that men do for each other all the time.

It is time that we move on from this fear. I often think that “We have come a long way baby” but then when I am working with my female clients it becomes clear to me that not much has really changed within ourselves. We still harbor old fears such as the one above, we still gossip about how the other woman has achieved her success, and we still choose men to advise us over a female in the same profession, in most cases.

We are excellent at building strong relationships with others, it’s time that we also become good at asking those we have built relationships with to help us grow our business. To buy from us, to connect us, to hire us, to refer one another more effectively.

It is time to put the fear of being perceived as pushy, too salesy, calculating and manipulative behind us.  It is time that we stop talking about supporting one another and start referring and using one another’s businesses.   It is time to allow our networks to help us!

I love to help people be more successful with their networking activities.  Most of us are networking because we are looking for more referrals for our business.  Unfortunately over time people come to realize that it takes more than meeting, greeting, and exchanging cards.

Here is a list of common issues that business people have around generating referrals for their business.  This is not a complete list, but does cover many of the issues.

• I spend more time networking than following up on referrals.
• I find that I give a lot of referrals to people but get very little in return.
• I don’t know the right place to networker.
• I don’t know the right time to ask a person for a referral.
• I get a lot of low level leads that do not amount to business.
• I often don’t have time to follow up on the referrals I am given.
• I tell a lot of people what I do, the they just don’t seem to understand.
• I don’t attend networking events because I really don’t know what to do when I am there.
• I feel like I have a lot of visibility but it is not leading to referrals.
• I don’t know the value of an appointment.
• I try to build a power team but no one follows through.
• Following up after a networking event often falls through the crack.
• I cannot figure out why some people will not refer business to me.
• I don’t know exactly who is in my contact sphere.
• I don’t know who I want my next customer to be.
• My database is unorganized and not sortable.
• I would rather just make friends and hope they buy from me.
• My referral partners do not participate at the same level I do.
• I don’t know how to qualify a referral for others in my network.
• When I have a one to one it becomes too social.
• When I get a referral, it often does not convert to business.
• I cannot get my fellow network members to educate me how to refer them.
• I am not sure how to educate my network.
• I am spending too much of my time with low value prospects.
• I cannot get clarity around my target market.
• My referrals are unpredictable.
• When I get a referral, I am often disappointed in the quality of it.
• I spend too much time working on my network versus in my network.
• I don’t understand the six steps of the referral process or if I am missing any of them.
• I don’t understand how to move a person into a  proactive referral relationship.
• I get some referrals from my clients but that is about it.
• I know I need more business by referral and I just don’t know where to start.
• I am confused about the role that Social Media plays in my network.
• My company has offered reward for referrals, yet get few of any quality.

Building your business by referral is Simple, but it is Not Easy.