As a small business consultant who for years has counseled entrepreneurs and who has had the unique privilege of working with hundreds of women entrepreneurs as a business adviser both at SCORE and the SBDC, I have had the opportunity to compare women versus men as successful entrepreneurs. My conclusion is that women make far better entrepreneurs than men and here are the four main reasons why.
They listen better
The key to a successful small business is understanding your target market and what ails them. This can only happen if you learn to listen to your current and prospective customers and try to find out what their pain points are. The next logical step would be to create a business solution and build a message describing that solution using the customers key reference words or phrases. Men understand this but unlike women who listen with full attention, men tend to immediately try to solution the problem even before it is fully defined.
They multitask better
Running a small business calls for the ability to do several things concurrently and there is no tomorrow for most of these tasks. Men tend to charge after one problem and after they run over it like a bull in a china shop they then turn to the next. They do make conquests but these are consecutive and not concurrent and consequently they win battles but end up losing the war. Women have the ability to juggle many things and keep more balls in the air.
They pay more attention to detail
Men are so intent on finding the solution to a problem that they tend to gloss over the details in order to get at the solution. Women pay attention to all of the gory details and tend to have to get it just right or they just keep solutioning it. Just look at how a woman hangs a picture and then let the guy do the same and inspect the results.
They elicit more trust
In a world where customer service is the key to success, the customer needs to feel that he/she is being taken care of. Women have better interpersonal relationship skills and can make a customer feel more attended to. People tend to trust women more and feel more taken care of. Men have a tendency to be more confrontational and end up creating even more friction.
These conclusions will not be accepted gracefully by many of my male clients and contemporaries. My one comment to you is to look inside and really see if you exhibit some of the tendencies I have pointed out. If you do, this is a good opportunity to start working on improving them.
For you budding female entrepreneurs, take a moment and visit Women in Business and Minority Financing to get more help in starting up your venture or just contact us.