Business Networking and Sex - Ivan Misner [13]
I would feel deserted if my friends decided that a little bit of temptation was more important than spending quality time with the kids at the party. Do you see the analogy? If this happened a couple of times, women would expect children’s birthday parties to be great places to stock up on fabulous weight loss products. Would anyone be even interested in the kids anymore? We need to keep our eyes focused on the goal—strong, communicative, directed networking. The more personal responsibility we each take on, the less the power the few have to create a reputation for the many.
Some unfortunate comments from our male survey members show how this cycle just gets stronger with every turn:
I don’t mean to be a sexist, but the good-looking businesswoman will always draw a larger crowd at a function, and businessmen assume that giving business to this attractive woman somehow makes them more likeable to her.
Dealing with very attractive women may influence your business approaches.
Men tend to be more willing to help an attractive female.
There is a difference between being attractive and dressing for sexual interest. Very attractive women can shut down flirting while remaining pleasant and firmly business oriented.
What Were You Trying to Sell?
Our strongest drive as a species is that for sex. That is why sex works to sell most anything to most of the population. We even used sex to sell this book to you, or at least pique your interest until you found deeper meaning in its pages. But first we had to get you to pick it up and look at it, didn’t we? If you want to sell a car, just drape a few scantily clad women over it. If you’d like to sell beer, depict a scene in which a classic nerd has a gaggle of well-endowed models hanging on his arm as he chugs from the bottle.
Half-dressed women have been used to sell things to men for years. There is the insinuation that if the guy buys the product, he’ll also get the babes. Even men who are happily married or in monogamous, satisfying relationships have the desire to think of themselves as virile, maybe even to the extent of being the only inseminator of an entire village.
OK, that may seem dramatic, but in both the animal and human kingdoms the blatant proof that males want their own offspring to triumph is evident in many places. The drive to fertilize many females in early evolution is why we are here today. I realize that I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but the strength of this drive is what people forget when they create chaos. Have you ever heard of a crazy maker? Yes, this is a person who does one thing, but acts like they want something else. It makes people around them feel like they’re going nuts!
Pick up any men’s magazine or just spend an afternoon watching football and count how many products are sold to men by using scantily clad women as bait. The chemicals in men’s brains make them vulnerable to this kind of manipulation. Of course, men can control themselves. That’s what ethics and discipline are. But why make the road to achieving goals littered with landmines that set us up for failure? Men are visual. They’re distracted by breasts even when they’re trying hard to concentrate on something else. Period.
In her book, For Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn finds out through conducting hundreds of interviews how visual men really are, concluding that even happily married men are distracted by attractive women.
Where Should I Rest My Eyes? Gazing at the Name Badge
One of the most common tips I find myself repeating for men networking with women is regarding the awkward placement of the nametag upon the chest. My strong advice for men is to look into a woman’s eyes and not at her chest. But what should we do about the dreaded nametag conundrum? At least twice during