Businesses not tapping half of their potential customers

SACRAMENTO
April 24, 2006 5:00am

Small businesses, big businesses – no matter the size, many are missing a major opportunity: Selling effectively to women in business, says Leslie Grossman, a serial entrepreneur and author.

“What I am really talking about is this huge marketplace of affluent women that are buying for their businesses and their personal life,” Ms. Grossman says in an interview with CVBT.

((Listen to her thoughts and tips on tapping this potential customer base by clicking on the audio link below.))

Her new book, “Sellsation; How Companies Can Capture Today’s Hottest Market: Women Business Owners and Managers,” offers examples from IKEA and IBM to American Express and her own insurance agent on how to successfully tap the women business executive market.

Too often, Ms. Grossman says, businesses fail to realize that a different approach is needed to woo women into becoming a long-term customer and supporter.

“I don’t think they realize that those women’s lives are so different than the general female’s and are also very different from the general businessman,” she says. “Because their life is very different, the way they buy and make purchasing decisions if very different.”

Ms. Grossman has launched five companies including Women’s Leadership Exchange, which describes itself as an organization supporting “successful women entrepreneurs in growing their businesses.”

(The CVBT interview was conducted April 22 at the Macy’s store in Sacramento’s K Street Mall shortly before the store opened for business. Ms. Grossman was there for a seminar sponsored by the clothier Jones New York, one of the corporate sponsors of Women’s Leadership Exchange.)