Gender awareness crucial to business success

Back in another life, I sold, designed and managed kitchen and bath remodels. Oh, the stories I could tell. Construction and remodeling jobs can foster some stressful and challenging dynamics between homeowner and contractor. A psychology degree is often more valuable than a tape measure when working in that industry.

On not-so-rare occasions, contractors get stuck between husbands and wives like a ping pong ball, and it’s because the couple has not come to a clear enough agreement about what they really want or how much they want to spend. So each begins using the contractor to advance their desires. It’s a no-win place for the contractor, who must spend a lot of precious time getting the two on the same page with the same goals.

One day, the BBB received a complaint from a woman who said her contractor would not talk to her anymore. This being one side of the story, we remained neutral, knowing from past experiences that there are times a contractor will only speak if both parties are present or risk being back in the role of a ping pong ball.

One of my female staffers proceeded to call the contractor in question several times. No response. The customer finally pronounced, “See, it’s your voice. I’m convinced that this man just won’t talk to women!”

We tried once more, this time having a male staffer call. When the contractor got a call from our “guy,” not only did he respond, he showed up at our office in 15 minutes flat.

Maybe our female complainant was onto something, and if it’s true that this contractor won’t speak to women, how in the world does he ever stay in business?

Then again, I don’t know why this type of chauvinism should surprise me. I can’t think of a week that doesn’t go by when we hear such things from angry consumers or business owners as, “I want to talk to the man in charge down there!”

Please refrain from comments about me being some kind of a women’s libber, man basher or sexist. I’m relaying these facts simply and objectively, allowing you to draw your own conclusions about how business gets effectively accomplished with such bias out there.

According to “Marketing to Women” author Marti Barletta, women bring in at least half the income on average for U.S. households and influence 80 percent of household spending.

Businesses, for profit and not, are increasing the number of female leaders at all levels except the very top. Women connect more effectively to people, and men connect more effectively to things, so maintaining a relationship where a woman is involved is critical if you’re going to come to a satisfactory resolution where people are interacting.

There seems to be a silver lining here. Once, a business owner came into the office yelling for “the man in charge,” and I walked out to meet with and quiet him down. He was very upset that his company had an unsatisfactory record and wanted to get it straightened out.

He told me he had lost a large contract because a buyer checked with us and saw he had an unsatisfactory BBB record. I calmly explained the fact that his company has such a large volume of complaints, with many of them not responded to by him. He proceeded to yell, “If you were a man, I’d hit you in the mouth!” In this case, being a woman was definitely a plus.

My near-famous and widely admired investigator, Zan Deery, is a woman, yet people who only read what she produces without ever speaking to her are shocked that someone as aggressively effective as she is as an investigator could possibly be a woman. I do get comments from people that she is pushy; granted, she was born and raised in Philadelphia. There is a fine line between being effective and pushy, yet isn’t it odd most people continue to perceive highly effective women as being pushy? There’s that darn accountability clause again. This whole double-standard issue between men and women will most likely be another column.

I guess the lesson here is that ignoring the female side of current and potential customers unwittingly excludes the other half of the equation and is not a very business savvy idea. Discounting a woman’s influence and position in the workplace isn’t very clever, either, because sometimes there isn’t a man in charge.