Why She Buys (10 page)

Women have a higher verbal fluency than men. They focus on the details and will talk about their love of a product or service to their friends
.

Just when you thought I was done talking about women and talking, there is yet another point to make. (Remember that for women, a conversation is never really over; it is merely to be continued.) There are two primary reasons why women love a good chat, and both are related to how their brains are wired. As we’ve seen, women have more nerve cells in the left half of the brain, the part that processes language. They also have a greater degree of connectivity between the two parts of the brain, which may be why women find it easier than men to listen to and make speech.
²¹

So how different are men and women in conversation? For one thing, women relish the details of any story; men prefer the top-line summary. Details about people are often boring to men, who find details about things more interesting—whether it’s a new computer, a new car, or a sports team. In a nutshell, men are interested in how things work, and women are interested in what something will do for them. Rather than wonder about a new side-by-side freezer’s volume in cubic feet, a woman will ask, “Can I fit a frozen pizza in it?”

Unlike men, women feel a sense of urgency, even obligation, to tell people about a new product or service they’ve discovered. It’s almost an imperative in female culture. It goes back to women wanting to feel indispensable—they enjoy being the bearer of tidings that may help improve the lives of friends or family members in some small way. Notice
that if you compliment a woman’s outfit, her first response often will be just one word: the name of the store in which she bought it. This is her shorthand way of telling someone how he or she can get the look, too. It works something like this: “Stacy, I love your dress.” Response: “Bloomingdale’s!” Even though the answer is only the name of the store, it conveys,
I got it there and you can, too!

Usually this one-word answer is followed by a much longer story detailing how the outfit came to be. If you compliment a woman, be prepared to hear the back story about whatever it is you just complimented. It’s almost impossible for her to just thank you and walk away. (If you’re a woman, try this. It requires the strength of ten men.) Women need to give you the details: “You know, I bought this to wear to my son’s first communion, but then I thought, hey, this is perfect for work, too, so now I can wear it to the office!”

When telling their friends about a product or brand they love, women gravitate to details that demonstrate uniqueness. “This scarf is made of 100 percent bamboo. Bamboo! Can you believe it?” Such details give women what they consider to be a worthy nugget of information to pass on to their friends.

Some of the business implications of this gender difference include:

• Don’t lead with how something works—lead with the practical benefits
.

Women aren’t usually as interested in the guts of something as men are. They’re interested in the practical applications and the broader context of the purchase. Don’t just answer the questions about what it is; talk about where they’re going to put it, how they’re going
to use it, and how it will affect the other people in their lives. For instance, let’s say you’re selling a sofa bed. Instead of promoting just the technical aspects, such as the coil count of the mattress, you could talk about context: “Spending money on a great sofa bed like this means you could transition a guest room in your home into something more useful, like an office or a media room, and your guests will
still
be comfortable.” Now that’s practical!

•
Use stories to bring your service to life
.

Women respond to stories more than they do to just product information. In fact, you’ll notice that women will often answer questions with a story. This is a great technique for marketing (see MasterCard’s “Priceless” campaign, described at great length in
Chapter 5
), as well as for account executives who want to up-sell customers. Tell a story of how other people have used your product or service, or paint the picture of a scenario in which women could picture themselves using it.

•
Leverage third-party endorsements and testimonials
.

The third-party credibility of having your product or service endorsed by a trusted source is often more valuable than advertising. Women trust credible experts, including their favorite magazines and bloggers, to “edit” options for them across a wide number of categories, which makes public relations an essential tool for companies reaching out to women. The explosion in consumer-opinion websites such as
TripAdvisor.com
, not to mention the proliferation of product and lifestyle arbiters like
CNET.com
and
coolhunting.com
, are driving
brand choice across a wide range of industries. When you have happy customers, actively encourage them to post their opinions on these kinds of sites as well as on social networking sites like Facebook.

GENDER DIFFERENCE #4

Women have better memories for the details of both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Scientists attribute this to the fact that women have a larger hippocampus—the seat of memory and learning in the brain
.

For better or worse, women notice everything.

Women are wired to pick up on the details of people, places, and things—but mostly people. After all, women cater successfully to the biggest nonverbal constituency in the world: babies. Women have to notice every detail about their infants to keep them alive. They need to determine whether they’re hungry or gassy, sick or just hot, happy or uncomfortable, wet or dry, full or distracted. They must use all their senses to figure them out, to continue their ancient role in the survival of the species.

Thousands of years of successful mothering means that females in the human race are finely tuned detail-noticing machines. It’s this well-developed sense of reading meaning into body language, smells, sounds, and temperature changes that makes women notice everything about your business, even when they’d rather not. Blame it on estrogen. During a stressful event, the hormone activates a wider field of neurons in the hippocampus (where memories are
made), which causes women to experience unpleasantness in greater and more vivid detail than men.
²²

I have a dream of running a chain of gas stations that would feature the cleanest and most comfortable restrooms in the country. I’d put up big billboards all over America’s highways, advertising the sparkling bathrooms. If you don’t think they’re important, you’re probably not a woman, and you probably don’t have kids. Here’s an illustrative story from one young mother of two:

I make my trips to the grocery store quickly, because if my youngest child needs to go to the bathroom, she can’t hold it. To get to the bathroom at my grocery store, you have to go through the loading dock, then down a cement staircase, then through the employee locker and break room, to the furthest crevice in the basement, to get to a dirty, two-stall bathroom
.

It seems like stores are investing a lot to make themselves look better and encourage you to stay in them longer, but they keep forgetting about the bathrooms. They invest so much in the checkout line—like all those flat-screen monitors at the registers—and nothing in the actual experience. When my child has a meltdown, there’s nowhere to go. There’s one tiny bench in the whole place, right by the front door. They’ll even cram a bank in there before they’ll give you a bathroom. It’s clear that no one is thinking these things through, and yet every other person in the store is shopping there with their kids
.

As this story illustrates, bathrooms are just one example of the details that women notice in a business establishment. But they are an important demonstration of the kind
of detail that may escape the attention of men, who may have a higher tolerance for poor bathrooms. These days, bathrooms in particular are more important than ever, because of our penchant for drinking liquids everywhere we go. Coffee used to be something you drank only at home or in a restaurant, and so was water—unless it came from a fountain. Now our propensity to drink all day, every day, is such that even strollers come with matching drink holders—one for the parent and one for the baby. Whether it’s Starbucks, Aquafina, or a sippy cup full of milk, what goes in must come out. And if women know they can’t count on a clean bathroom, they may cut a shopping trip short or take their business elsewhere.

It’s not just retail, and it’s not just bathrooms. Women will notice if a salesperson’s desk is messy; if there’s a funny smell in the room; if employees seem to dislike each other; if the receptionist is rude; if the hold time for a customer service call is too long. Bad customer service experiences can leave an especially powerful imprint on women that we will delve into later in the book. The bad news is that if a woman has a terrible experience with your business, she may never forget it. The good news is that if she has a spectacular experience, she’ll remember it vividly and tell her friends.

This particular gender difference has several business implications:

• Sweat the details
.

Never think a woman won’t notice something small; she will. Women are thoughtful and appreciate it when businesses are, too. Bank of America has created a “Keep the
Change” marketing program in which it rounds up customer purchases to the nearest dollar and then transfers the difference from their checking to their savings account. It’s a small but thoughtful investment that will likely pay dividends for Bank of America in customer loyalty and brand awareness.

•
Ask for feedback
.

When women notice something about your business that they don’t like, prevent them from stewing on it for weeks, months, and even years by proactively giving them a chance to provide feedback. It will offer them the opportunity to vent, and give you a chance to rectify the problem.
Amazon.com
and
GoDaddy.com
, which sells Internet URL addresses, are two companies that constantly request feedback on their performance by proactively sending surveys and questionnaires. Even when women don’t have time to give it, they appreciate that a company cared enough to ask.

•
Consider the needs of the other people she’s thinking about
.

Women are constantly thinking about the needs of the people in their lives, so when you make the lives of those people better, you earn points with a woman. For instance, if you provide some entertainment for her children while she’s shopping, she will be eternally grateful; if you provide a seat for her husband while she’s trying on clothes, she will be relieved; if she’s brought her CEO along with her on a sales call and you make her look like a star by complimenting her performance, she will never forget it.

GENDER DIFFERENCE #5