This is Part 3 of a multi-part series. Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.
A few years ago, I was approached by a recruiter, for a sales role. “Am not looking at sales roles right now”, I said, not ascribing too much meaning to what I was saying.
“Oh ladies do that these days. Perhaps you are looking for something lighter, like HR”, he said, shattering the value of working women and HR jobs in a single stroke.
But, but.
Let’s take a few steps back.
Sales is a hard job. Forget the obviously difficult part of convincing clients that we have the best product or solution. The intangible difficulty of a sales job is actually in being on the road.
That’s the literal road in B2C sales (like selling toothpaste to distributors and retailers), the metaphorical road of the airport travelator in many a B2B sales model (like selling consulting services to large companies).
Sales is a hard job because it demands much of us. Blood, sweat, tears, yes. But also hours. Hours beyond normal work hours spent in locations beyond normal work locations, as we slum it out landing a client, an order, a pot of gold.
Sales is a hard job with much benefits though. We are led to believe, and perhaps rightly so, that a stint in sales is a necessary precursor to the corner office. There is a certain reverence we bestow upon a sales career, often associating it with “fighting from the trenches”.
What does it have to do with the “educated woman”, you wonder.
A) Sales jobs are hard to come by for women and B) Even if they come by, they are hard to keep.
“Are you cut out to spend a year in Mehsana?” we are asked, as the interviewer filters us out of that plum “Area Sales Manager” role. “Can you really travel 3 days a week engaging with our clients across the country, will your family be ok with it?” We are looked at doubtfully, as our seniors take us out of the consideration set for the next lucrative role in the company.
The inherent bias is only one part of the puzzle. The structural challenges are daunting as is, what with most young mothers not having enough support at home to leave their kids behind if they have to travel on overnight sales calls. They all probably need themselves a wife at home.
Let’s not even get to overnight travel. Simply networking and building relationships to land a sale has forever been defined by how men do it. Over a drink or a smoke, outside of work hours, breaking ice and clinking some ice. Much of what women don’t do because they don’t have the time or energy or both.
Now couple all this with the correlation between sales careers and vertical progression within organizations.
Voila. We know where the educated women are going, don’t we? Nowhere.
I might be making a hyperbolic connection here but in a constantly leaky pipeline where retaining women still remains a Herculean task, our selection bias on what qualifications are expected of someone to be able to move up while structurally not solving for it for all genders is only detrimental to women’s career progression.
Meanwhile, we spend our time talking about the “easy roles” women can do, because, ladies apparently prefer that.
What’s the solve then?
Encourage women to do more sales roles but that is only one quarter of the solution. By all means, equip women with tools and tips and tricks to sell. But.
Leave those biases resting for a bit. It’s ok if someone doesn’t want to do a sales role. It’s ok if someone wants to go back to a sales role after a different stint. Don’t judge why, don’t assume it is a capability issue.
Solve for the leaky pipeline holistically. Not because women fit HR more or Marketing more. But because you intend to solve for the leaky pipeline. More women at the top means more gender balance in buying decisions. Which means more gender balance for the seller on the other side, who might be a woman.
Lastly, as families and societies, try not to police women who stay out late on a sales role. Safety is important but perhaps empowering women with pepper spray is a better solve than mandating that they come home by 6 pm.
Do you have sales stories to share? Bias or balance, win or loss. Tell me more?
P. S. Views strictly personal. None of the events mentioned in this post refer to the organisation that I am currently associated with.