What you (still) don't know about selling to women

“One of the key things advisors need to do is take the time to educate women in a non-threatening manner, which means educating women for the pure sake of educating them, not just for the sake of making a sale.” Cleveland says.

Women do want to be educated and are receptive to taking an advisor’s recommendation. But that advice has to be presented differently to a woman than a man.

“What I discovered in my own practice is…surprise! Men and women are different. That whole Mars/Venus thing is true,” says Karen Roberts, CLU, ChFC, a wealth planning specialist with the Emerald Financial Group in Deerfield Beach, Fla., an affiliate of Lincoln Financial Network, and national president of Women in Insurance and Financial Services (WIFS).

Men, she has found, tend to follow the advice of the financial planner, whether they truly understand it or not. “Women, on the other hand, want to know exactly what they are investing in, how it works, the intricate details,” Roberts says. “They are not going to just say yes. For a lot of advisors, it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of education, and so therefore, they go just to the man who says yes and the women doesn’t understand. And down the road you are going to have a lot of problems.”

That could be why a quarter of women say they would leave their financial advisor after her spouse dies, according to the Prudential survey.

“It suggests that these relationships with a couple are very superficial from the female perspective. It makes you realize an advisor does really need to build that trust in the relationship with the woman as well,” Cleveland says.

One way to do that is by ensuring that both the man and the women get a chance to voice their opinions and concerns during consultations with a couple. “When we talk about business continuation, life insurance or what does retirement look like, he’s always the first one to pipe in, not always, but he pipes in,” Roberts relates. “So I make him be quiet and her talk. It’s interesting, because she’s never been given that opportunity before.”

Schmitt suggests that advisors explain how a product can actually benefit her and her family, instead of simply talking about an obscure investment benchmark.

Also, women are more clued into non-verbal communication, Schmitt adds. “As a result they are much better at picking up on deception and perceived slights,” she says. Consequently, she recommends advisors make more eye contact and use vocal inflections to emphasize key points when meeting with women.

Saving vs. investing

As a group, women tend to be more conservative in their outlook toward finances. The Prudential study found that only about half of women said they were willing to take on risk in exchange for a reward compared to 70 percent of men. More than half — 59 percent — stated they were only interested in guaranteed/FDIC-insured products versus 50 percent of men.

Knowing that, advisors shouldn’t try to change her outlook, but instead guide her to the products she would be most comfortable purchasing, Cleveland says, “which means they are going to be in things that are much more bond-oriented and more safe investments.”

It also means modeling different investment outcomes with various rates of return. For example, what the difference would be long-term if she had a 5 percent return on her money instead of a 2 percent rate of return, Cleveland suggests.

Schmitt contends that many women may confuse saving with investing. (Seventy percent of women in the Prudential study classify themselves as more a saver than investor compared to 60 percent of men.)

In other words, they think by simply socking away money, but not investing it, they can fund their retirement. “If they are setting aside 8 percent, 10 percent or 12 percent of their salary in savings, and typically in really conservative vehicles, women psychologically think that is sufficient for them to be in an appropriate place at the point at which they want to retire,” Schmitt explains. “Yet maybe it’s getting in the way of building those bigger, longer-term plans. But I think it’s also a foothold that advisors have perhaps not taken full advantage of so far.”

Where the ladies are

Women want to build a deep relationship with their advisor, so networking with female-centric professional groups provides good access to the women’s marketplace. “Find something you enjoy and that women go to and network that way,” Roberts says. “They want to be friends with you, they want to know and trust you. Once you do that, that’s how you’re going to grow and get referrals because women talk with each other.”

Schmitt points out that women, especially wealthy women, use social media. “Interestingly enough, it’s Facebook,” she says. “So to the extent that an advisor who wants to cultivate his or her female practice would have a presence online we believe that could be hugely helpful.”

In her role as president of WIFS, Roberts ultimately wants to see more women in the financial services field because women prefer to go to other women for guidance and that, in turn, would increase the number of women receiving financial planning advice. “They get each other,” she says.

Cultivating that female clientele will become increasingly vital to an advisor’s practice as women control more wealth over the next 10 to 20 years, Roberts stresses. “We’ve arrived and we need help.”

Just maybe not on the golf course.

See also:

A woman’s world?

Women face glass ceiling in retirement

Networking, the female way