Business Networking and Sex - Ivan Misner [4]
The question is, has there ever been a long stretch of time in your life, guys, in which you’ve not offended or been misunderstood by women? No, of course not. What this means is that we are all losing a portion of our potential to do business with women because of this. The fact that almost half of the world’s population is female should provide great motivation for us to get this problem solved!
This is the goal of the pages ahead. Because we make important, money-related decisions based on our assessments of facial expressions, gestures, tone, manners, and even smell, the face-to-face networking process is an opportunity for each gender to learn how to please the other. To grow as a business culture we must keep up with gender-specific communication styles and preferences. This means adapting to expected behavior, much like when traveling in a foreign land and observing its customs to make for a smooth vacation (not to mention to avoid landing in jail).
She Says . . .
It’s Especially Important for Women
A recent poll showed that 41.4 percent of businesses count on referrals for more than 80 percent of their sales. Furthermore, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that only 5 percent of job seekers obtain employment through the open job market, meaning primarily online and printed help-wanted ads. Another 24 percent get jobs by cold-calling companies directly. Twenty-three percent have success through employment agencies, college career-service offices, and executive search firms. The remaining 48 percent obtain their jobs through referrals. How do these work and business seekers get that word-of-mouth cycle to work for them? Face-to-face networking!
Not only does networking play a major role in growing a powerful business, but it also paves the way for a happy and secure life. Surely, anyone can see the benefits of having a pool of amiable friends and associates ready to look out for them and send good things their way. Today, the abundance of related training media on word-of-mouth techniques is vast. People are hungry for knowledge about how to connect to others in a magnetic way that can change their lives. Now more than ever, men and women need to harness this training to hit the ground running and gain the mandatory business edge for thriving within our current economy’s competitive markets.
What Are We Here For?
“Men seem to be more hesitant to build deep relationships and women tend to focus on pretty much everything else but business,” wrote one of our survey respondents. This represents the conflicting thinking styles that make both genders in the same room wonder if they were really at the same event. It is the core reason why there are so many other conflicts in thinking and communication between the two.
If each sex is more skilled or drawn to different aspects of socializing, doesn’t it seem that we can help one another with our resumes of respective natural talents? Helping women excel professionally is important, and if they have open minds and can handle the truth, I feel there is room for change and positive growth out of the comfortable ways that may be holding them back.
Though guys may act boorish and offensive at times, women need to really want to understand them. Yes, men can be pigs, but women play a bit part that enables men to continue that behavior, without even realizing it. How many times have you been offended by an off-color comment, yet said nothing and just sulked away? Have you ever been ignored, discounted, or rudely referred to,