The Major Opportunities Of Being More Diverse In Your Business
In the world of business, we now have an audience of women around the globe who have much higher purchasing power than they’ve ever had before.
There are more women in the workforce, more women earning their own money, and more women making major decisions in the household too.
This huge shift creates a major opportunity for businesses that understand the importance of diversity and consumer choice.
One market that has seen these rising opportunities is the drinks market.
The drinks business has taken this opportunity with both hands
Many years ago, most beer was served in a standard, ugly glass without much choice for the female market, but these days you can get your beer served in an elegant stemmed glass.
I had a client in the drinks business some years back who told me about the work that they had been doing to be more inclusive. They realised that women like beer too, but they don’t want it in big, ugly beer glasses!
It’s all about customer choice
It’s all about consumer choice, but even today we still aren’t giving this enough thought in business. There are many products/services out there that are not exactly female friendly, which means that a big opportunity is being missed.
The good news is that businesses don’t need to make some huge shift to remedy this. They just need to tweak things a little.
It only takes a small tweak
A lot of the time, people think that the problem with anything regarding diversity is a massive change, but the last time I looked, men and women are both human beings and we operate more or less the same way.
We just need to be a little more aware of each side’s needs and tweak our businesses accordingly.
At Elevate Talent, we talk a lot about the law of requisite variety, which tells us that the one with the most flexibility controls the system; so why aren’t more businesses looking to be more flexible when they offer their products/services?
In some cases, it’s because many industries are still clinging to some very traditional and outdated values.
Let me share a classic example with you.
A massive opportunity squandered
Not long ago, I went with my sister to help her pick out a new car. She had the money and she knew what she wanted, so I thought this would be a relatively simple task. However, I was shocked with how it turned out.
When we asked buying questions, we got ignored. When we asked for the keys to a car, we were told “it’s locked”, and one of the car salesmen never came back to help us.
We went to three of these garages, and every time it was the same response. One of them even told us to come back with my sister’s husband next time.
The kicker is that she doesn’t even have one!
After several very confusing minutes, we slowly realised that these garages didn’t believe we had any buying power and so didn’t even bother to help us!
Misguided assumptions
Finally, we decided to try one last garage and, thankfully, this one was different. We were both listened to and felt very taken care of, and guess what? Not only did my sister buy her car, but I got one too!
We walked out of that garage with over £80,000 in purchases.
Needless to say, those other garages had made a big mistake…huge. (Remember that scene from Pretty Woman anyone?)
Old-fashioned social values have no place in modern business
It’s odd to experience in 2021 that there are still some very old-fashioned values being held in many industries which are holding businesses back from making the most of their customer base.
Not only do we need to open up our teams and hiring process to diversity, but we also need to reflect this in our marketing strategies and our potential customer base. It’s no longer as black and white as it used to be. Men don’t just buy cars, and women don’t just sit at home looking at cleaning products either!
Diversity brings massive opportunity
Opening up your business to serve a more diverse range of customers opens up all the new business opportunities they can bring, just like my sister and me at the garage.
Now, of course there are going to be products and services specifically designed for a male or female market, and that is fine; but where the line isn’t so clear, we need to think if we are appealing correctly to all of our potential markets, otherwise we run the risk of missing out on significant business opportunities.
Do you have an example that shows where your business has been overlooked because of misguided assumptions? If so, I’d love to hear all about it.
Feel free to write your story in the box below, and let’s get a conversation going on this topic.
Alternatively, you can learn more about the Elevate programme by emailing us at team@elevatetalent.co.uk.
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