Multichannel Marketing
for B2B Marketers

Watch it, TopCat. This is dangerous. A member of one of our LinkedIn groups is wondering about the role of gender in business selling.

“Do you prefer buying from a female or male salesperson (when buying B2B professional services face-to-face)?” he asks.

We’re shocked that B2B marketers would base their buying decisions on anything but on the merits. But our colleague calls this “a fundamental issue in sales.”
He wants to know: “Are the laws of attraction influencing us at a deeper level, or can we all rise above it like true professionals? This is not about what you SHOULD do – it’s about what to ACTUALLY do!)”

Well, what do you think, readers? Are men swayed by a pretty face, and women by the so-called “hunk factor?”

That’s so retrograde. And we’ve apparently moved beyond it in direct mail and email.

Years ago, a firm selling to women hired a female copywriter, but that’s no longer true. Good copywriters can write for either gender. Some of the letters that Ed McLean wrote went out over a woman’s signature, and some of Judy Weiss’s went out over a man’s, and nobody was the wiser.

In email, there’s even less discernment of the writer’s gender. It’s like the dog says in that New Yorker cartoon: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” You simply put yourself into the mind of the prospect, and figure out the benefits they want.

How far we’ve come since 1928, when a direct mail trade magazine observed of women:

“The hand that pours at bridge teas is the hand that rules the world. It’s the hand that opens a great deal of the direct mail advertising that comes to the American home; the hand that tosses such literature to the high winds of heaven–or shows it to the man who signs the checks.

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