YOUR MONDAY MORNING ACTION PLAN
We’ve covered a lot of territory in this book. You’ve learned dozens of ideas for using your own personality and strengths to connect with customers; inspire them to do business with you; instill confidence; and demonstrate appreciation. And you’ve generated your own ideas along the way. The Four Motivators Framework gives you a dynamic tool for growing your business by engaging women as customers. As you’ve seen, many of the strategies are broad enough to appeal to men, too, thereby providing an inclusive experience for all of your customers.
You’ve heard from leading brands, businesses, and sales leaders who are approaching the women’s market opportunity in creative ways, from innovating new technologies, like Sephora, to revolutionizing business models, like Everest, to catering to modern families, like the PGA of America.
The six trends have provided context for how women are living and buying at this moment in our culture, to help ensure that your business practices are as relevant as they can be. Now the question is, where to begin? And for those of you who already have efforts well underway, where can you deepen your investments and expand?
I recommend the following action plan for bringing these efforts to life in your own business. Whether these steps serve as starting points or check-in points for you, knowing where your business stands provides a strong foundation from which to grow.
ACTION 1: BENCHMARK AND SET GOALS.
In chapter 1, you ranked your business on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of its effectiveness in connecting with women consumers. Use this number as a benchmark going forward. What would a “10” look like for you, and what actions would need to happen for you to get to that number? How long would it take? From there, determine the current gender split of your customer base. This number can serve as your second benchmark. Set specific goals: By following The Four Motivators Framework in this book, what kind of customer growth could you expect to see in one year? In five years? And what do these numbers mean in terms of potential revenue increases for your business?
ACTION 2: GAIN A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF FEEDBACK FROM YOUR EXISTING CUSTOMERS.
What kind of feedback are you currently receiving from women customers? Does it differ from that of your male customers? If you have the analytics available, examine the gender split of customer feedback and look for service-enhancement opportunities. Can you tap into one or more of the six macro trends to take customer experiences to the next level? If you work with retail partners, ask for their help in providing information that will help you better understand how their customers view service experiences in these channels. When possible, collaborate with these partners to take customer experiences to the next level.
ACTION 3: LISTEN TO WHAT CUSTOMERS ARE SAYING ON SOCIAL MEDIA.
If you represent a brand, people are talking about it on social media. As much as you can, leverage social listening tools to determine how women are talking about your business online. How engaged are they in your industry category? What brands do they mention most? What are they saying about your competitors? What do they love? What frustrates them? Visit relevant websites and social channels to uncover how women are talking about your business. Use these insights to inform your customer experience strategy.
ACTION 4: IDENTIFY WHAT’S ALREADY WORKING WELL, AND DO MORE OF IT.
Your business is already successful at engaging women as customers at some level. Now that you have a new set of insights, you can better analyze why some aspects of your business may have more appeal with women consumers than others. What are the elements that are already working well? Once you’ve identified them, find ways to replicate or expand these initiatives. If you have team members that are successful in these areas, work with them to document and teach their best practices to the rest of your staff.
ACTION 5: CONDUCT YOUR OWN RESEARCH.
Verify that your customer insights are up to date. Consumer journeys are changing fast. You probably have competitors today that didn’t exist three years ago. Your customers have new expectations too. If your firm hasn’t conducted market research with women in the last three years, it’s time to get out in the field.
If you’re a solo practitioner, there are many simple and inexpensive ways to conduct your own research. One is to schedule time to talk to your most important customers (and former customers) to hear their viewpoints on industry issues and the products and services they need most. These conversations might just give you new ideas for expanding your business. There are also many inexpensive survey tools available. Find a research method that works for you, and make it your goal to know your customers better than anyone else.
ACTION 6: ASSESS YOUR CUSTOMER-FACING MATERIALS AND SPACES.
Armed with your new insights, assess your physical spaces as well as your marketing materials, signs, and website design. Do you have an inclusive representation of men and women, in both words (including pronoun use) and images? Are the photographs current, or do they feel outdated and stereotyped? If in doubt, get feedback on your current marketing materials from a representative group of women who will give you their candid opinions. From a physical space standpoint, determine which areas of your physical space are easiest to improve and which areas require a longer-term investment. If you could do only one thing to make your space more inviting for women, what would it be?
ACTION 7: TRAIN YOUR TEAMS AND STRENGTHEN THEIR DIVERSITY.
If your business has a formal sales training program, be sure that it encompasses women’s viewpoints as well as those of your male customers. Without an inclusive program, your colleagues are at risk of missing communication skills that will enable them to connect with this crucial market and, at worst, may alienate the very people they’re trying to attract.
One idea for a fast start: consider creating a women’s advisory board of customers and/or influencers, and solicit the group’s input.
Strive for more diverse, gender-balanced teams both internally and externally, including with agency and vendor partners. Research shows that gender-balanced teams achieve greater results. McKinsey and Company has demonstrated that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.1
As you’ve seen throughout this book, the absence of a female lens on business strategies is a blind spot that companies often discover too late—after they’ve failed to connect with their audience.
ACTION 8: PILOT. REPEAT. PILOT. REPEAT.
There are dozens of ideas in this book—and those don’t even include all the ones you’ve come up with while reading it. Some of them will be appropriate for your business, and some won’t, but hopefully all of them got you thinking in a new direction. Armed with these fresh insights and The Four Motivators Framework, test new concepts, products, and ideas. And then repeat the process. Remember that short-term strategies are the enemy of success. If a maiden effort fails, try something else, because once is not enough. I’ve often heard executives say, “We tried to increase our numbers with women customers, but it didn’t work.” I would inevitably find out that they had tried one initiative, one time, and when it wasn’t an immediate success, they never did anything again.
Repeat.
ACTION 9: MEASURE.
With benchmarks (created in Action 1), it’s much easier to measure the impact of new initiatives. Determine how many areas of the business you can benchmark, and begin the process for the current year. Strive to build on your success every year, and stay committed to fostering a more inclusive approach throughout your organization.
ACTION 10: MAINTAIN YOUR RELEVANCE TO WOMEN CUSTOMERS OVER THE LONG TERM.
As our time together draws to a close, allow me to add one final and somewhat unusual suggestion for achieving long-term success: get out of your office or work environment, at least temporarily.
Many years ago, I worked for a great boss who told me something I’ve never forgotten. He came to our offices one day and found me working at my desk. His brows furrowed, and he said, “It always makes me sad to see you at your desk. I don’t want to see you here. I want to see an empty chair and know that you are out in the field, talking to our clients and finding new ones. You won’t find them behind that desk.”2 His words had an impact on me. I started to realize that the most successful people I knew were the ones who prioritized getting out of the office and spending time with their current customers and target customers. They visited retail partners and distributors. They shopped competitors. They held their own seminars. They made time to go to networking events, civic events, and conferences. They engaged in the world their customers lived in.
Who has time for that? You do. I do. We all do. Everyone, from presidents to professional athletes, has the same twenty-four hours in a day that we do. Engaging externally is one of the best ways to stay relevant with women, because their purchasing patterns—and female culture—are shifting all the time. Here are a couple of specific strategies for getting out and going to your customers:
Engage in female culture.
Spend a morning or afternoon visiting brick-and-mortar retailers that are popular with women in your customer base. Notice the ways these stores communicate through language, visuals, merchandising, and customer service. What lessons can be learned?3
Business books are vital (please allow me to say thank you for buying this one), but don’t stop your professional reading there. Check out the bestseller lists at least monthly to stay current on what women are reading, and make it a goal to read autobiographies by contemporary women authors. There are far too many fantastic authors to list here, but if you don’t know where to start, try Bossypants by Tina Fey (New York: Little, Brown, 2011).
Subscribe to or follow the social media accounts of prominent women’s publications. Not only will they give you insights on how women communicate with one another; they’ll provide you with good examples of copywriting styles. You’ll be surprised by how much you can learn about women’s culture in the small pockets of time between attending meetings, catching airplanes, and waiting for conference calls to start.
Use a similar strategy to follow influential women on social networks.
Finally, turn your attention to TV and movies that feature female protagonists and plotlines. Get plugged in to the world of women’s culture, and you’ll be amazed at how much more relevant your ideas—and conversations—become.
Take field trips.
What are the chances of having a bold, brilliant idea while you’re hunched over your keyboard? Not as good as if you’ve been out and about first. Every week, build time into your schedule to get out in the field at least once. This can mean anything: visit a customer; hit some retail stores; go to a conference; say yes to someone who wants to have coffee with you; give a presentation to a class at a local university; see a new play. Getting fresh stimuli from new people and experiences will have a positive impact on your work. You will meet new customers. You will sharpen your skills as an observer. You will also be giving serendipity a chance to work its magic.4
Women’s consumer domination is here for the long term. With The Four Motivators Framework and the strategies and tools presented in this book, you’re ready to win her business.