Selling to Men or Rather Their Fears

It’s a well known fact that women rule the check book. Any marketer knows that he or she will be selling to women. Really smart companies actually hire women to do this. But there are the occasionally sales that are directed by men. And marketers should be aware. For instance, rarely is it that a woman will purchase a pickup truck or motorcycle. A fly rod? Forget about it. These are manly purchases. So what’s guiding their decision? Fear.

John Travolta in Saturday Night image not available.
See credit at end of article.

Men more often than not purchase stuff for one of two reasons, to impress their fellow Y chromosome bearing buds and to attract the double XX chromosomes. They want to look stronger, sexier, richer and whatever else makes them look alpha. The fear is not looking alpha. There’s where the marketing should focus. Rarely does a man say, “I want that ‘cause it makes me look so damned alpha”. What he will nearly always do is rule out a purchase because it might make him look less than alpha or down right girly. He’ll even state this in so many words.

So how does one market to the alpha’s fear? First, avoid playing to the alpha attributes of your product. You don’t want to be too obvious. Yeah I know there’s the really obvious Old Spice guy approach to selling to manly men. Sales in my house, in fact, have gone through the roof. But I have a wife and four daughters. And they’re buying and wearing the stuff, not me. This was a woman’s purchase. When selling male generated sales, where the man is the decision maker, play to the fear.

Using pickup trucks as an example, position the truck alongside a less manly vehicle and let the comparison do the talking. If you’re really aggressive, have your vehicle hitched to the competitors and drag it across a field. Just make sure your vehicle can actually do that. “Cause they’re gonna push, or in this case, pull right back. Men like that kind of competition. Again, make sure you can win that dangerous game.

 But what about the female influencers. Not so much of an issue here. You just have to allay that male fear again. If you can convince them that a chick is gonna dig the truck or the guy in the truck, you’re in. Again, positioning the other guys as a less than manly purchase will work. Picture a guy, let's call him Ken, in his Alfa Romeo (and skinny jeans) trying to pull a gal’s car out of a muddy ditch. Of course he can’t. But the guy in the truck shows up, let's call him GI Joe, (in boot cut denim) and walks that baby right out of the ditch. Your not selling a truck to this guy, you’re making him look so much more alpha than the guy in the Alfa.

 I love Alfa’s by the way. But I’m already married. Ciao Bella!

 Image from wikipedia page 2006-08-30 03:55 Dineshkannambadi 1776×948 (724928 bytes) Photograph taken by self (Dineshkannambadi) in July 2003 See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paonroue.JPG

Southwest Airlines - Probably the Best Run Business on Earth

In the past month, I’ve been to New Orleans twice using three different airlines. Two of the airlines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines departed from Hartford, Connecticut’s Bradley International and both used the same shiny new and roomy 737s.  But that’s where the similarities ended. The American Airline’s experience was miserable. Southwest on the other hand was more than pleasant. So what gives? 

Answer is a single simple one. American Airlines employees were miserable and rude. Southwest employees seemed to actually be having fun, infectious fun. I’m never flying American again. If I have to pay a premium, so be it. I’m flying Southwest. I want to have fun and not be miserable.

So I’ve identified the WHAT made the difference. But WHY is the larger business question. Why are the Southwest folks so much nicer? I checked the southwest web site and found this under the title, The Southwest Experience:

Well mission accomplished guys! But I’m still wondering how the hell do you do that in such a difficult industry for folks to work in. I called the company and talked to a service representative who told me some interesting stuff. She started with a fairly pat answer about employee centered business operations. But after being pressed a bit, she said in her opinion, she was happy at Southwest primarily because she and every other employee there was treated with respect. “Everyone is an equal at the company” she continued from pilot to baggage claim. She then gave me a number to get some employee training information and called immediately.

The Southwest representative I spoke with was extremely friendly and helpful. He told me he wanted to talk to me but was extremely busy as the company had just released its earnings report that morning and scheduled a call for later that afternoon. We scheduled a call and did talk later that day. His interview pretty much confirmed that respect for employees was critical. But he went into more details. Having great employees started with hiring great folks. They needed that "glint in the eye" to start with, he explained. After that, training the employee to serve the customer was critical. The job was providing the best experience to the customer and although there were extensive employee duties lists and guidelines employees were give great latitude to take the initiative to further that goal. They were provided the respect and trust required to go beyond the required job duties. He also added, as other employees had, that everyone from CEO to Baggage claim was on a first name basis.

In addition to respect, another word kept coming up in the conversation, "communication". Southwest works hard to include employees in all planning stages of the business and maintain open communications at all levels. And they started a employee blog to facilitate the dialogue. More importantly, they use it. Likewise they take customer input just as seriously.

Harking back to my evolutionary biology perspective, a business is an organism. All the arts have to work well together. If one part fails, the entire organization may as well. At the very least it will falter. If I was to compare Southwest Air to an organism, it would be an athlete. They just do everything right. By the way, they did turn a profit last year.

Full disclosure: I have no interest in Southwest at all. No stocks, no contracts nor relatives or friends working at the business.

Lesson here is that your employees are the foundation your business rests upon and the face of the business for the customer. There's a limit to what you can provide them in terms of pay and benefits. But respect can be supplied in limitless quantities with equally limitless results. A critical factor in providing respect is open communications.

Challenges Facing New Orleans' Entrepreneurial Market - Part One

The Entrepreneurial climate in New Orleans is no doubt a growing and exciting trend that the city has never experienced before. The BioInnovation Center and the multi-billion dollar Biomedical district in particular and a host of incubators and shared-space operators are all cause for hope in a city dubbed “The city that care forgot”. But there are some real concerns that need to be addressed before the trend can be considered that and not another feel-good fad. 

To become a mecca for high tech ventures, a city has to possess a few characteristics that attract that cut of cloth. Number one is lifestyle. To attract young energetic and entrepreneurial folks, a city needs to possess culture and entertaining venues.  New Orleans no doubt is hands down the nation’s winner in this category. But when the music stops and the tylenol kicks in, there’s some serious business concerns that need to be addressed. This brings us to number two on the entrepreneurial must haves for a city, a responsive and effective government and number three a great educational environment at all levels. Unfortunately for New orleans, numbers two and three go hand in hand. 

True, the move towards charter schools in New Orleans is an exciting move that may generate some real results. But that’s going to take a generation to deliver. The real issue facing the New Orleans entrepreneurial market is a lack of well funded universities that can attract young talent now, foster new technologies and spin off new businesses. There are only two somewhat large universities to speak of in the crescent city, Tulane University and the University of New Orleans, both are at a fraction of their pre-Katrina levels, and a handful of smaller universities. Compare this with Boston’s 60 plus well funded colleges and universities with real and effective partnerships in the for-profit world. 

Just as all the parts of product development are critical and required to work together as a single organism for success, so should all the parts of a healthy entrepreneurial market. Investment in the Biomedical District was a stellar idea. But not including significant investment in higher education at the same time was an unforgivable oversight. 

Likewise, investment in the future in the form of tax incentives for new technologies is weak at best in the state. The region got a new start after Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita. This should have been followed by radical new ideas about taxation and investment. More thoughts on that in another post later.