Saleswoman: Standout, Succeed, Stay Safe

By Erica L. McCain

Quite possibly one of the most refreshing, quick-witted, and practical guides to helping women set the stage for defining who they are in the professional workspace—Saleswoman is a must-read. Equal parts sage advice and humor, Saleswoman is the perfect read for any woman looking to up her business acumen.

—Heather L. Schreiber,

• Language: English
• Publisher: McCain & Associates of Ohio,LLC
• Release date: Jan 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781734258363

Erica L. McCain

Erica L. McCain, LUTCF is a financial professional with over 20 years experience and the founder of McCain & Associates of Ohio, LLC. She pursues her true passion of helping clients understand complex issues in all stages of their lives and careers. Erica L. McCain is a member of MDRT (Million Dollar Round Table), the premier association of financial professionals and also the author of Ladies With Loot: How They Spend, How They Save, and How To Be One Yourself

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

What Are You Overlooking While Your Prospects Are Looking You Over?

First things first: this is not a book of selling tactics. If that is the sort of thing you are looking for, there are about one million other books, articles, podcasts, and videos that could help you out. This book is something much rarer: a practical, real-world guide to self-presentation and self-preservation for women working in any kind of sales-focused industry—particularly for women working in finance, which has been my career for twenty years.

This book is unabashedly specific. I’m not trying to offer any commentary on politics or gender or social dynamics; I don’t want to make any statements about how people should live their lives or express themselves; I certainly don’t want to pass judgement on the choices we all make about how we carry ourselves in the world. What I want to do is address a real need for pragmatic, straightforward advice that I have seen firsthand over the years.

Many women—especially women who are just starting out in their careers—simply don’t know how to handle some of the more delicate interpersonal issues that arise from a field like sales, which often requires us to engage with potential clients in a way that is a bit unusual in human relationships. We have to walk a tightrope of establishing rapport and creating a friendly atmosphere while still appearing competent and authoritative. We have to inspire trust and engender a certain degree of affection without developing a confusing or unhealthily intimate relationship. All of this is complicated by the realities of being a woman in a professional setting and the different standards that women are often held to.

No one teaches you this stuff in college, and your boss, your professional mentor, and your coworkers aren’t going to broach the topic either. Some professional development courses might pay a bit of lip service to the different experiences of men and women in business, but none of those programs or workshops are going to give you specific, useful advice about how to safely and effectively present yourself to clients in a way that maximizes positive connections while minimizing misunderstandings and negative encounters. In many cases, it would actually be inappropriate or verboten for any authority figure to give you the advice that would actually be the most helpful. How weird would it be if your college professor advised you to be very careful with white shirts because it’s almost impossible to find one that doesn’t display your bra or undershirt? How uncomfortable would you be if your boss suggested not opening lines of communication exclusively with the male half of a couple? And yet, those are the kind of real-world tips that can help you avoid many common career pitfalls.

What most women really need is a wise friend who can offer an experienced perspective. If it were a friend who suggested you tone down your makeup, or who told you the client who texted you at all hours wasn’t just really curious about interest rates, it would feel a lot less uncomfortable and a lot more helpful. With this book, I want to provide that kind of help and advice based on my own experience—and, in many cases, my own mistakes. Much like the friend who offers grooming or relationship advice, this book comes out of personal experience and from a true desire to help my fellow professional women.

Much like the friend who offers grooming or relationship advice, this book comes out of personal experience and from a true desire to help my fellow professional women.

So, fair warning: if you bristle at the idea of changing anything about yourself for a job or a career, this is not the book for you. I fully admit that this book is about what some might call the superficial, and, in an ideal world, no one would care about the vast majority of the things I’m going to discuss. In that ideal world, no one would ever judge you on anything other than your professional skill, clients would always be appropriate, and no one would ever lose work over mere personal quirks or harmless self-expression. In the real world, however, sales can be incredibly dependent on intangible things—the vibe clients get from you, their perception of whether you look competent, and their own preconceived notions of how a professional person should appear and behave. If you are reading this and thinking, Wait—I shouldn’t have to change how I dress or do my hair to do my job; that’s not fair, you’re absolutely right. Like so much in life, it’s not fair, but it is real. If you are looking for practical solutions for the unfair challenges of the real world, then this is the book for you.

If it’s any consolation, while this book does focus on the financial industry and other jobs that have a significant selling component, almost any job does require some degree of conforming. If you wanted to be a tattoo artist but refused to get any tattoos of your own, you may find that potential clients look askance at you, and if you wear your finest khaki slacks to an audition for a thrash-metal band, you may not get the gig even if you can shred. All industries have their own character, their own expectations, and their own taboos. With this book, I want to focus on sales-based industries, which aren’t all identical, but which do have a lot of commonalities.

Finance is an old industry, and I don’t just mean chronologically. The tone of the industry is a bit more conservative—more formal and traditional than many others—and this is, to a degree, true of many other sales industries as well. There’s a very simple reason for this: barring the occasional tech prodigy or trust fund baby, the people who have the manageable assets are the people who have been around long enough to accrue them. When you are marketing financial products and services, you are often marketing to an older audience, and one that is particularly wary because they are often putting their entire nest-egg in your hands. If you want to secure that client, it makes sense to be aware of where they are coming from in terms of their general background and their specific situation. When someone’s entire financial future is on the line, even a very