Tips from Judy Hoberman, Selling in a Skirt, on Leveraging Your Talents for RICHES!

Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of angst, attitude, and negative mindset so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us online every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also tag it at the blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to your fullest is not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910.

Hello everyone and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio. And yes, I am Bernadette Boas and I am so excited about today's call. And a number of you are gonna understand why once I introduce and get dialoguing with Judy. Judy Hoberman, my guest. Hi Judy.

Hi Brenda, how are you?

I'm great. I am absolutely great. I was so excited about you joining us. Judy is an award-winning accomplished corporate training director. With extensive experience in training, course development, and project management. More importantly, her company, which is Selling in a Skirt, is not just a training program. It is a method and a philosophy, a way of life for the next generation of successful, successful saleswomen. And after nearly 30 years experience in the sales side of business, Judy had observed and experienced such a wide variety of techniques come and go sizzle instead of smolder, and ultimately leaving adopters high and dry. So she felt the need to step in and do something about it. She has created the suite of services that make up Selling in a Skirt to address one particular segment of misguided sales professionals, and that is women. Selling in a Skirt speaks to both the women's need to use her gender-based talents and the male managers' need to understand how to help her to be successful by using her instinctive qualities rather than those which are not natural to her. Selling in a Skirt goes one step further and helps male managers— this is what I found extremely interesting about Judy— it helps male managers recruit, train, motivate, and retain female sales professionals. So I want to welcome Judy. Thank you so much for joining.

Thanks, Brenda. I'm very excited to be here. Thank you.

And I know this subject more than ever when it comes to women in the workplace, because every aspect of our life we have to sell. But more importantly, in the business environment, the sales positions that are out there predominantly long-term or long ago were very male dominating. Women just have some natural skills and talents and abilities that make them exceptional salespeople, correct?

That's very true. You're also right about sales has always been male-dominated. Um, everybody, every profession, when somebody would come out and do a sales presentation, it was male. And that has shifted greatly over the past few years, but something that I found pretty remarkable is that today there are statistics out there that women actually make up Almost 50% of the workforce, and we're not talking about low level, we're talking about women in high-level executive positions.

Absolutely.

And everybody sells every single day, no matter if you have sales in your title or not.

Well, that is a key point, I think, too, because, and your whole program, yes, you come from a diverse corporate background, you come from a diverse sales background within a male-dominating industry, But your point about we sell every day of our lives, whether it's negotiating a car or we have to go into a store and, you know, try to find the right item for us, and maybe there's some degree of selling us or negotiating for something. So sales techniques and sales skills are critical.

Absolutely. And one of the other pieces is if you are a person that recruits for your company, You're selling an opportunity, so you also are in that same position of selling, whether you're selling to a man or you're selling to a woman. So all of this goes back to the differences, the gender differences between men and women and how it works.

And what are those differences? What are the differences really between men and women when it comes to impacting business?

That's a funny question.

It's probably a loaded one too.

Men and women are different in every— yeah, they're different in every single thing, every part of their life. They're different in the way that they ask questions. They're different in the way that they listen. They're different in the way they, um, their communication style totally, their body language. But the biggest, biggest difference is the way that we develop relationships. And you cannot be successful in any part of your life if you don't know how to develop relationships. And that is the number one difference. And that'll go whether you're, you know, asking a question or listening or anything. If you can't develop a relationship, you cannot be successful. And women are known to be more relationship-driven and they are better at it. However, I want to say up front, that's not to say that men do not develop relationships, because they do. It's just a known fact that women are better at it.

Right. And so give us, give us some ideas of what you mean by that. Give us some examples of how women really hone their relationships versus men?

Well, women have a relationship with everything. They have a relationship with things that they buy. They have a relationship with the company that they're buying from. They have a relationship with the salesperson. They have to see that this fits into their life. And a lot of times the way I try to describe it is that you would have to paint the picture and have the woman in that picture. So you have to tell her whatever it is that you're talking about, whether it's a position in your company or whether it's a product or a service, how this is going to relate to her and everyone around her. Men are more transactional. Men are more— they want facts and figures and features and benefits. So just tell them what it is and how to do it and let them do it. That's just putting it as bluntly as possible. Men like to exchange information. Women have the relationship with that information that they exchange. Right, right. It's basic, but it speaks volumes.

Yeah, no, that makes total sense. And the reason why too is because I'm gonna relate it to the boys club and the lack of a girls club. So, you know, we always hear about how guys, how men in business have their boys club. And yet you don't hear a lot of women running around like, you know, talking about their girls club. And I think what you're touching on is they need to learn how to do that. They need to learn how to establish those clubs. Is that what you're saying?

Well, I mean, I don't know if you necessarily have to establish the club. I mean, it's always— there's always going to be a boys club. There always is. And I don't care how far we've come or how far we will come, there'll always be a boys club.— and it's not to say that girls should have a girls' club, but there should be someplace where women can congregate and women can network and women can feel that they're a part of something bigger. I don't know if it's really— let's get down to it— what's being boys' club. I think what the most important thing is that very successful men at the top of all the businesses are realizing that the business has morphed. From what it used to be, and it used to be one that was dominated by men and the way that they did business well, and that was transactional. That was, let's get it done. Right. And it's morphed into what women are more, um, that they do it better. They're more relational. So I think that everybody's starting to see that if you start to build these relationships, you will be successful, and that includes an entire company of business. So, you know, it may not be, let's get part of the men's club, but let's start incorporating and embracing some of the differences and start using them together so there isn't the boys against the girls. You know what I mean?

Right, absolutely. So, what do you tell male managers? What are some things you tell male managers in order to really— not exploit is not the word I'm looking for, but in order to really optimize a woman's natural talents within a sales function?

Well, one of the things you have to know, and when I say this everybody generally laughs, is that women like to give the entire story. They like the beginning, they like the middle, and they like the end. And if you don't let them talk about that story in completion, they just can't go forward. Men like the beginning and the end. Period, end of discussion. If they want the middle, they're going to ask you. And if you think about your husband or your boyfriend or your significant other and you're telling a story and they're rolling their eyes, it's because they just want to know what happens at the end. That's all it is. Now, with a male manager, what happens many times is if you ask a female salesperson, tell me what happened on that particular appointment, and she starts telling you the entire story, you're tapping your watch and tapping your foot and rolling your eyes. Because you don't really care. You just want to know why she did or didn't make the sale. And I think that one of the things they have to start being more aware of is that women like to tell the entire story. And so you have to basically suck it up and just let them do it. Or you can say, tell me what happened and then let's go back and go into detail. And that sometimes makes it a little bit easier. Did you sell or you didn't sell? Now let's see what happened. So now they have the ability to tell the story, maybe not in the same order. Right. So that's one of the things that you have to be aware of, the different styles that women have. The other thing is it's about asking the questions. Women need open-ended questions, meaning it's like an oral essay. They need to be able to talk about, you know, they're going to say to you, Bernadette, this is an amazing radio program, tell me how you got started, as opposed to Bernadette, Do you like doing a radio program? It's two different answers that you're going to get. Right. So men like the yes/no, multiple choice. Women like the open-ended, being able to chat. So whether it's about themselves or whether it's about their clients, they have to bring the whole piece into their being.

Right. And do you— now this also sounds like it relates to a lot of the assessments out there of how to really kind of understand how your employees work, how employees to employees work, how employees to consumers work. So do you have assessments and tools that you use with your clients to help both the manager and the employees, whether they're, you know, female or male, to really understand these differences and how they like to be communicated to, sold to, and managed?

Yeah, what I do is I have different examples of questions that can be asked or the way they should be asked. And we do— when I work with people, it's a lot of interactive work. It's not just me saying, "Do it this way, trust me." It's more— there's a lot of role-playing involved, and people are— sometimes they are a little nervous about it, but once they start doing it and they realize, "Oh, I could say this," I should have said it this way, or I should have listened to it this way. So a lot of the things that they do, they're not generally assessments, but there's a list of questions, the types of questions, what's good for what gender, you know, how people hear it. You know, I can say one thing to you and you'll hear it the way that I want you to hear it, and I can say the same thing to a man and he might hear it totally differently. Or a man might say something to me that I hear differently than what he means. So, you know, it's all about the listening, it's all about the asking the questions, and so I do a lot of interactive work.

Okay, and then do you see an element too in regards to— because women— well, let me— I don't want to ask it that way. Are women aware that there are these differences in themselves versus their male counterparts, and do they work to leverage their naturals, or do they in many respects, you know, man up, so to speak?

You know, that's a very funny question because it can go both ways. A lot of times women feel they need to man up, they need to be more masculine, more aggressive, and be part of the boys. And what happens is it's very confusing to everyone. It's confusing to the men around them, it's confusing to the women around them, and it's even confusing anything to them. So, you know, that's not what this whole program is about. It's not to develop a whole new group of aggressive masculine women. What the point is, is that there are a lot of women who do understand that their feminine skills will help them. And I'm not talking about batting your eyelashes and wearing sexy clothing, right? I'm talking about using the things that are part of your DNA. Now Me personally, I come from all male-dominated industries— construction, security systems, insurance— all male-dominated. And every time I tried to use something that I knew was natural to me, I was always told to stop being such a girl and stop making everybody your friend. When in reality, that's exactly what you want to do. You want to build that relationship and you want people to trust you and to be your friend. And even when I showed how it worked, because my businesses were basically built on referrals, they would tell me that it's not duplicatable. You can't possibly make this a system that works. Well, you can make it a system that works because what women do naturally is they're inquisitive, not nosy. They start asking you questions about your family, about your lifestyle. When you do that, you're now more involved with that person. Now they're in your circle and you're in their circle and you start to build a relationship. Interestingly enough, in this day and age, women have about 171 contacts in their email or their cell phone. Well, if you start building relationships, that 171 people can be business for you.

Right.

Because when a woman trusts you, what do they do? We tell everybody everything.

Absolutely.

Oh my God, you have to go to this restaurant, you have to go to this store, you have— because we love people and we want to make sure that everybody gets the same kind of attention that we've gotten.

Right.

So why wouldn't you refer people? That's what it is. So when women use the natural ability that they have of building a relationship and getting to know people, That's what they should be doing as opposed to trying to man up like you said.

Yeah, well, and you know about, you know, Selling in a Skirt is a book, by the way, everybody. And you of course know about my book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch, which really kind of is a proven story because it's mine about the fact that I spent a good 20 years manning up and as successful as I was, It caught up to me, and it eventually does catch up with you regardless, you know, of how long that might take. And yet, ever since then, and as I've worked through the shedding and transformation process, I have been so far more successful just being me, using my natural talents. And actually, I've heard— I've had to learn, and that this leads into a question. I have had to intentionally pay attention and re-tune myself to go back to those natural female traits of really wanting to understand the story, really wanting to dive into what my customer's looking for, what even I'm looking for as a customer, as opposed to being so, what I call, corporate and just bulleted. I mean, I was that typical male, I was that, you know, just give it to me, the facts and the figures, and in, you know, 3 bullets or less and let me move on. And so my question to you is— and I might have just answered my own— but obviously you can learn how to, how to, you know, female up, so to speak, in the workplace. Is that true?

Yes, yeah, you can. And you know, it's funny that you say that because I find myself many times thinking— so I'm just giving the end of the start it. Because a lot of times when you're, you know, you just want to be done with it, right? But in reality, um, it's, you know, even though it's part of our DNA, there are still women that— and it's not masculine women, but women have the, the, the DNA of transactional, you know, having more masculine traits. Not that they're masculine, right? Masculine traits, right? They just want to get it done, right? But, you know, when you come through the ranks, as you and I both did and you have to be more of the boys club because, I mean, that's how you survive. It's very interesting that when you are put in a position where you can use your own feminine skills, you have to try to remember what they are.

Absolutely.

You know, I mean, I never dressed like a man. I never wore the suspenders and the, you know, the bow tie and things that women do and slick back your hair just to be one. I never did anything like that. I always dressed appropriately and feminine. But I knew where I was and I knew what I had to do. Even though I tried all the time to be more relational, sometimes you have to be more transactional. You have to get the job done and you have to be quick about it.

Right.

Because you have to answer to the people above you. So yeah, you have to go back and learn some of the skills. And actually in my book, that's what we talk about is here are some of the things you could be doing.

Right, right.

And it's not saying that one way is wrong and one way is right. It's just, there are differences. And if you embrace the differences, I just imagine what the environment will be like. Right. And not only— I don't need to repeat this.

No, please, please continue. Please continue.

I was gonna say, and it goes into your personal life because I was doing a training one day and in the middle of me, I was mid-sentence. I wasn't even done with a sentence and a man jumped up and said, oh my goodness, I now know how to talk to my wife. All these years, I couldn't understand why she was always upset with me. Right. Well, truthfully, I mean, and that's what I'm saying, a lot of the things are so basic, and when you hear it, you go, "Really? That's all it is?" Yeah, that's all it is.

Well, except for the fact that a lot of things, you know, you could probably attest to this, a lot of things are easy to kind of learn and say, "Oh, that makes sense," but then to actually put it into practice, that's what's torturous.

Yeah. That's the hard part.

Yeah, that's what takes—

I make a very bold promise. What you're going to hear today is going to be basic. If you do it, when you actually implement it, you're going to see a change in your bottom line when you do that. So sometimes people say, yeah, that makes total sense, but it's easier not to do it.

Oh, absolutely.

Just like anything else, easier not to.

Well, and I think what's interesting about your programs and what I really want the audience to also understand too whether it's through her book or through other programs, because they're so interactive and because they're so scenario-based and they're actual, you know, she sets up actual situations for you. It's not your typical, you know, presentation or seminar or training where, you know, someone just is in the front as a mouthpiece, you know, talking to you, and then you walk away and you never get a chance, or you never even attempt to implement those. She actually gets you so engaged and involved, whether it is in her books or live, that you can actually see how it's gonna impact you in realistic scenarios, and then that way you can kind of learn them much faster and learn how to then walk away from that experience and implement them. And I think that that's critical. So, I have another question, and I wanna demystify something— I wanna demystify something else that women tend to bring to me and talk about. Are men open, are men, especially in the workplace, are they open to want the women to be women? And meaning, you know, I hear a lot of women who will complain that, you know, their male managers, you know, aren't supporting them or they're not, you know, supporting them like they are other men and they're not giving them the tools and the resources to be able to kind of leverage their own natural talents. Is that an issue that exists or is that just an excuse someone's making?

No, it's definitely an issue that exists. It's definitely an issue that exists. I think what's happening though is that men are becoming more aware that women— are more responsible for consumer purchases. For instance, right now women are responsible for over 85% of all consumer purchases. So if that's the case, you need to know how to sell to this particular market. That doesn't mean you have to be female to sell it. You could be male to sell it as well. But you have to be able to identify the traits that a woman needs when she's being sold to, and those are the same traits that their salespeople, male or female, need to have. So sometimes men think it's much easier to just do things the way they've always done, to be the male salesperson, because they do get the job done faster.

Right.

It takes time to build a relationship. But because women make decisions more times than not, you have to take that time to invest in building a relationship. So when women say that, you know, their male managers don't want to give them the tools or whatever, sometimes they're not sure what the tools are. And does it mean that there have to be two different training programs for men or women? No, it doesn't mean that either. All it means is that you have to identify what the differences are. You know, if you identify it and you give it to them, then they have the tools. And if a woman knows that their male manager is aware that there are differences and that they say, well, you know, I know that we do it this way, there's also this way to do it. And that's what I do. I actually say to them, okay, here's the way that most people are going to do it, but it's okay if you try it this way. And we just turn it just a little bit.

Right. And so can you— Can you identify for us, and you have at the beginning of the call, but for those of you, because I've noticed some people join in, can you identify for us a few examples of those differences between men and women on a sales call that people have to be aware of?

Well, yeah, there's a couple of differences. You know, one of the differences is that when a man says he wants to think about it or he wants to call you later, he's probably telling you he's not interested. Now, he could be, but generally speaking, he's not. When a woman says that same thing, she really— what she wants to do is she wants to talk to people that have been through whatever it is that you're talking about, whether it's a product or a service, whatever it is, and she wants to find out some more. She wants to do some independent research on it and probably will have some more questions for you before she makes a decision.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. So, do you like that? That's just one of the differences. Another thing is that a man absolutely, positively wants the facts and figures and maybe a summary of bullet points about why this is important.

Right.

A woman wants those same facts and figures, but she wants it woven into a story. She wants to know how this is going to affect her, how it's going to affect her family. Give me some different scenarios about how it's going to be, and give me some information maybe about your competitor or another company and how it would be, what you have to weave everything into a story. That's really what you want to do.

Yeah.

And that's just a couple of the differences. And you know, and then I talk about what you can do when you get, when you're bumped up with those kind of differences. But it's really kind of basic. Another thing is the way that questions are asked. Okay, the way you ask the questions the way you respond to a question. And again, like I said earlier, men want a question, they want closed-ended questions that are going to be yes or no, multiple choice, right? Because they're basically gathering information. Women want to be able to ask a question that's going to elicit more information because they want to be part of this person's life now. Yeah, they want to be involved in what's going to happen. And as a good salesperson, you need to know who you— what gender you're you're talking to and how to ask questions. And as a good consumer, you're going to be able to do the same thing. You're going to give back that information so that you and the salesperson have a relationship. And it's going to be a long-term relationship as opposed to short-term.

Sure. So let me ask you a question because we talked about earlier the fact that women are a large part of the workforce and they're actually even dominating or soon to be dominating some traditionally male-dominating industries. So what are some ways to attract women into those typical male-dominating industries that you would recommend?

Well, one of the things that you have to decide is how you're going to actually corner this market. You have to go to places where women congregate. And one of the things that I tell people is, you might want to go to whatever industry you're trying to attract and offer to do a sponsor networking event with them. If you're talking about electricians and you want female electricians, you're going to talk to a company, an association that deals with this particular brand. If you're talking about financial services, you're going to look for associations that talk about women in financial services. Then you offer to do a networking event. Pretty basic. You can also attract candidates that are coming out of school, whether it's graduate, undergraduate, you know, an MBA program, whatever it is, and you do like a college fair or you do a brown bag lunch or something where you can attract candidates. One of the things I tell a lot of the companies is you need to put up on your website women in executive positions or women that you want to spotlight. Because women spend a lot of time on social media.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, and you know, everybody thinks that it's the teenagers that are on social media, but in fact it's only 15% of teenagers that are using social media, and women, 62% of all the users are actually 25 to 54 years old that do social media, and women spend 30% more time than men on social media. Yeah. And if you want to just venture a guess about how many hours a day women are on social media, on the network, social network, it's 5.5 hours a day.

Oh geez.

So if you put up a website, yeah, I know, and then, and you know, and I try to actually time myself, and yeah, it could be pretty ugly when you get to that 5 hours. Menti. Yeah. We think that we're doing a lot of, you know, work, and sometimes we are, but we're actually, you know, building relationships because that's what social media does. But if you built those, and if you're on your website, if you featured women and you showed, you know, how long they've been there and the training programs that you offer and advancement, because that's what women are looking for. Absolutely. For salary, and yet they're looking for benefits, but they're looking for, they're looking for a home, they're looking for a company to adopt them into their family, right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely. People. Do the same thing. Do things that attract women. Talk about the things that we're interested in. Right. And, you know, once you get a few women, you'll get more because women tell women and so on and so on.

Yep.

Wow.

I'll tell you what, we're gonna have to have you back on because these 30 minutes fly by. And we definitely need a lot more in regards to this subject matter. And I want everyone on the call and listening afterwards in the archives to make note of Judy Hoberman, her Selling in a Skirt. It's her business, so go to sellinginaskirt.com. She has a book, Selling in a Skirt, and her programs, both live and online, or the program she has on her website, are definitely ones that both women and men can take full advantage of. So I want to thank everybody for joining us on Shedding the Bitch, and Judy, thank you so much. Come back next Tuesday at noon, everyone, and go to sheddingthebitch.com for some additional details. Thanks everybody and have a great day. Thanks, Judy.

Thanks, Bernadette. Loved it. Thanks.