I’m taking a one post break from legal issues to blog about a discussion I had last night during my dinner at Webhostingday. My dinner companions consisted of three men and one woman. Everyone at the table, with the exception of me, was from the Netherlands. We were talking about networking at hosting events. We all felt that it can be difficult to meet new contacts. One of the Dutch men voiced his opinion that women have an easier time in sales because they have a natural advantage breaking the ice since, at least in the tech world, the industry is so dominated by men.
This set off a lively discussion. My opinion is that while women may have a bit of an advantage breaking the ice, this is actually a net disadvantage since the conversation, at least from the point of view of the other party, is based on the fact that the other person is a woman. So, in essence, it is based on sexual attraction. As a result, I took the position that woman actually must overcome that bias in order to make sales, while men, in a heterosexual world, don’t need to do so.
The Dutch men took the position that because sales is based on forming a relationship, any type of relationship, regardless of whether it is based on attraction at some minor, and initial level, created an advantage. They used the example that more attractive men tend to be more successful in sales, likely for the same reason.
So while the majority of our conversation did, in fact, concern issues like the future of the cloud, this issue got me thinking about the nature of sales, and how connections are made at networking events.
As is typical for Webhostingday, the event was quite spectacular, the food good, and the conversation interesting. While I’ll return to my typical blogging about legal issues, I’m interested to hear what you think of this conversation.
