Black Sales Journal

Racial preference is an amazing natural phenomenon.  It can also be a difficult force to overcome.  The most important thing is to understand racial preference, because if you understand it, you can strategize how to work around it.  It may seem natural and you may posses some racially preferential attitudes as well. Think about it!

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Customer preference in any forum is powerful! Preference in sales is powerful, and manifests itself by creating unfair advantages for one option or another.  Racial preference in sales is powerful, and can even be damning against the sales professional that never gets an opportunity because they are the wrong color (regardless of what color they are).

You will remember reading about racial preference in sales and its effects in Black Journal before.  This depiction of racial preference in the buying process makes more clear the effect that race has on the decision of who a buyer will potentially work with.

I will define Racial Preference in sales as simple definition that I will give as follows:

The customer choosing to work with a sales professional who is of a particular race or skin color.

That’s it.  Simple preference to work with someone on the basis of his or her color or race.  It happens every day in one way or another.  This is not the most insidious type of discrimination, just the most pervasive.  It is also more ‘natural’, and does not seem wrong to many who do it.

There are also opportunities for preference to have minor versus major effects so this one is on the basis of degrees.

We will use an example of “true” racial preference, meaning control of all other externalities.  This study was done by Stanford University News, July 19th, 2010 (see the whole article).  This story was well done by Louis Bergeron and is essentially a clinical example of what happens when race gets in the way.

A Strong Example of Racial Preference

This example is as clinical as it can be, done by researchers at Stanford.  I will use some clips of the dialog, and you will understand the design and results of their tests.

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Online shoppers more likely to buy from white sellers than black, Stanford researchers say

When a seller’s race is evident in an online classified ad for an iPod nano, black sellers receive fewer offers and less money than white sellers, says a new Stanford study.

Online shoppers are more likely to buy from a white seller than a black one, according to a study by two Stanford researchers who posted ads on local classified advertising websites across the United States.

Courtesy of Jennifer Doleac and Luke Stein

Classified ads featuring a black person’s hand holding an iPod being advertised for sale received 13 percent fewer responses and 17 percent fewer offers than ads showing the iPod held by a white hand.

The ads offered the latest version of the iPod nano for sale, with each ad containing a photo of either a dark- or light-skinned hand holding the popular digital music player. The ads with a black hand received 13 percent fewer responses and 17 percent fewer offers than ads showing a white hand. Black sellers were also offered less money for the iPods than white sellers.

“We were really struck to find as much racial discrimination as we did,” said Jennifer Doleac, one of the researchers and a doctoral candidate in economics. “On average it’s a younger, more educated group of people shopping online and if anything they probably discriminate less than the population as a whole.”

“We suspect that the negative effect of race would be even larger in the general population,” she said.

Doleac and fellow researcher Luke Stein, also a doctoral candidate in economics, ran ads in more than 300 locales, ranging from small towns to major cities, during the course of a year.

The study showed that black sellers were at the greatest disadvantage in the Northeast, where they received 32 percent fewer offers than whites. In the Midwest, black sellers got 23 percent fewer offers, and they got 15 percent fewer in the South. The West was the only region where the difference in the number of offers received by black and white sellers was not statistically significant.

The amount of money offered black sellers was between 2 percent and 4 percent less than the offers white sellers received. The disparity was most pronounced when the ads were posted in locales with high crime rates or where blacks and whites were geographically isolated from each other.

Buyers responding to classified ads of an iPod for sale made offers 2 percent to 4 percent lower when the iPod was shown being held by a black hand instead of a white hand.

In general, black sellers were at much less of a disadvantage when the ads were posted in more competitive markets, where larger numbers of iPods were for sale, Doleac said.

The iPod listed in the ads was always a silver, 8-gigabyte version of the most recent edition of the nano, which also plays videos. Each ad stated that the box had never been opened and the iPod was for sale because the seller did not need it.

Doleac and Stein never met with the buyers in person. Instead, when it came time to set up a meeting, the researchers said they were out of town and offered to ship the iPod to a buyer’s home, which produced another striking disparity.

Potential buyers corresponding with black sellers were 44 percent less likely to agree to have the iPod shipped to them and were 56 percent more likely to express concern about sending payment to the seller by PayPal.

Doleac and Stein interpreted the buyers’ reluctance as indicating a lack of trust in the sellers. The would-be buyers were also 17 percent less likely to include their name in emails when they responded to ads placed by black sellers.

“The results were obviously disappointing in terms of what they said about the state of society,” Stein said.

Because they never met with any of the buyers, Doleac and Stein have no information on the race of the respondents.

Stanford University News, July 19th, 2010
Study Conducted by Jennifer Doleac and Luke Stein
Article By Louis Bergeron

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Why This Example? Draw the Parallel!

I chose this as an example because of the simplicity of this display of preference.  The difference in the offers on the iPods was simply the color of the hand.   There are those who suggest that my characterization of preference might be flawed.  I would suggest that there is no clearer and simpler example of racial preference that can be

You need to draw the parallel from this P2P (Personal to Personal) activity to the B2B (Business to Business) and B2P (Business to Personal) sales that most of you undertake every day.  The bridge on all of these is simple:  In B2B and B2P sales, you always are selling to a person.  There is no doubt about that…you are selling to a person and not a company.

Practical Applications

Job Hunt and Resume - The practical aspect of this is that unless you are aware that an organization you are applying to be looking for a minority candidate, you should ‘scrub’ your resume of racial indicators.  I discussed this in depth in Black Sales Journal 11/21, Is Your Resume Race Neutral?

Business Cards - Another practical application is that I feel it is important to keep your picture off of your business card.  The business card is not an ID, it is your business information in a quick and familiar format.  Keep the picture off unless you want it well known as might be the case in some real estate and B2P positions.  This was specifically mentioned in Black Sales Journal 2/10/2010 9 Prospecting Tips for the Black Sales Professional.

You want to show that you are the professional looking for the opportunity to solve a customer’s problems.  Once you crest the hill we call preference, you can begin to show your true talents.

Always be the best.

Your comments are welcome.

This remains an important topic.   Although it is just that an individual would have to pass muster like this, it is wrong that an individual would have to do so on the basis of color of their skin, gender, religious affiliation, age, or sexual orientation.  Fact is that it does happen.

However, you can win in this situation, and the facts below illustrate that.  Those Black sales professionals who have faced this know that they experience a  personal victory when they are successful and recognize the covenant we all share to be the best, thus slowly but surely changing perceptions.

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If you are a Black sales professional it is no secret that closing a sale is a calculated action; part of a process that we call the professional sales call.  There is no doubt that if you are in this group you will need to have a strong sense of when to close and the technique to close both sales.

Closing on Two Fronts

The close has to come on two separate fronts.

• My company/product is the best for you and is an acceptable price to create the value and utility that your organization needs
• Although potentially different because of my pigmentation, I am the best choice of sales professional to handle the needs of your organization now and in the future.

There will be those that may disagree that this happens.  Don’t be naïve, as it is common.  Note the examples below:

• A young sales person has to make the sale that they are a viable option by showing that they can provide the knowledge and have access to the wisdom and experience which when coupled with the energy of youth can be the best option.  This is right and natural.
• Several years ago women wrongly were forced to close the credibility sale by showing that they were able to prove personal credibility and dependability.  This was fundamentally wrong, and still is.

When I was a young sales professional, I found out that I had at least two items against me.  At a time when there were a much smaller number of sales professionals who were black, I was Black, and was a mere 22 years old.

I was selling in a commercial market (B2B) where there were few Blacks were experienced, and knowledge and experience were to be touted as an advantage.  I quickly learned that you had to find compensators for these “disadvantages” while at the same time I needed to keep doing the fundamental activities that give you a chance.

Learning how to close the sale and the personal/professional sales was one of those activities.

Closing the Product/Service Sale

Knowing how to close the product sale can be scientific, yet still is an art.  Recognition that the close is not always designed to get an order but can systematically be used to determine what objections are out there is important.

There are numerous books out there on closing and having read some, they all have something to add on closing techniques and styles as well as when to close.  I am not going to cover them here, yet will in a future post suggest some books and blogs on closing that you might want to consider.

The main purpose of this post is to discuss the sale that you must make even if your product/service is the best one out there.

Closing the Personal/Professional Sale

This sale is less defined.  Much of this sale is actually done as a prequalification. This is a set of activities that you undertake from the beginning of the relationship.  This set of activities is different for each customer/prospect, as each one comes with a different set of perceptions and preferences.

It is during this calculated process that you get a customer/prospect comfortable, confident, and willing to do business with you.  Is this different than with any other sales professional?  They answer is probably yes.  It is different because in many cases you are altering perceptions, and attempting to change preferences.  A big order, yet something that can be accomplished.

Female Black sales professionals who sell know this more than any other segment.  It is better than it used to be, yet still difficult.  They are challenged to hurdles.

Here are some of the items that you are trying to sell in the Personal Sale:

• Professionalism
• Responsiveness
• Credibility
• Expertise/Specialty
• Personal Accomplishment
• Effectiveness
• Vision

Your customer/prospect will recognize that if you have these traits and one more, the customer’s organizations interest in mind, you have everything you need to have value for his/her organization.

Many of the items above are linked to the Black Sales Journal Article that defines them in depth.  Please take a look at them to get a fairly in depth look what these attributes entail.

Make It Work!

Now back to the issue of prequalification. This is the process of gaining the necessary credibility to make the personal sale.  It is giving the necessary information to the client in “bite sized” portions so that it can be digested and absorbed.

You will prequalify by activities such as sending your customer/prospect your newsletter regarding his businesses industry, referring him to your customers who are next door (who he knows) to get an idea of your expertise, and share with him your ideas about how companies with your profile can get benefit in the future from you product/service.

In Summary

You can correctly position a sale of a product and prepare a close, yet if you are wise, you will realize that perceptions and preferences can be overcome, yet not in a one hour meeting. Prequalifying can have success by getting agreement and clarifcation on many of the issues that would be in question at the final sales call.

These items include providing references to give confidence (professionalism, responsiveness, expertise, etc.), making suggestions for changes and visions of the future (vision, expertise, effectiveness, etc.), and developing the deep relationship that lets all of this gel together.

Don’t miss the opportunity to feed it slowly to your customer early on.  If you give references, suggestions, and expertise information all at the end, when you present your proposal, you have missed an opportunity.  It is too late.

Close both sales and get the order.  Good selling.

Your comments are welcome.