The ConsumHERist - Avoiding Sports Analogies

Posted on | August 21, 2008 |

By Delia Passi

This is one subject I’d like to knock out of the park. If I take the ball and run with it, I can sink a three pointer and cross the finish line.

Men, I know that sports are often a great metaphor for life and that many sports analogies work really well in so many situations, but please can you keep it to a minimum when selling to women? It’s not that women don’t appreciate sports; it’s just that so many sports analogies fall flat with women. Plenty of women know all about the rules of all the major sports, but when faced with the compulsion to drop a sports analogy, I’d like to suggest that you might drop back ten yards and punt.

I recently spoke to a very successful financial advisor who had attended a seminar with her son, who is also her partner. The presenter used a football analogy, which one she couldn’t remember, and she had to turn to her son to ask what the analogy meant. Obviously, the next few things that the presenter covered were missed by her entirely, and she probably lost some concentration. This same result can be expected in a selling situation when an analogy is meaningless to the woman customer.

I’d like to suggest that if you are prone to using sports analogies, and you know who you are, that you consider finding a different way to frame your thoughts, so that they are more easily interpreted by the average woman. That doesn’t mean you need to start using terminology that is unfamiliar to you, like maybe cooking, but sometimes you do have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

Women can relate to subjects that you too can relate to, like family relations and child rearing, home ownership, safety and health, so when you’d like to say stealing home plate, maybe you could consider saying making the grade instead.

Delia Passi, Founder of WomenCertified® and author of Winning the Toughest Customer: The Essential Guide to Selling to Women is a regular columnist on eBrandMarketing. Want my take? Email me and visit my sites www.medelia.com, www.womencertified.com

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