Susan Wilson Solovic: Hello, welcome to sbtv.com. I’m Susan Wilson Solovic. My guest today is Delia Passi. She’s the president and CEO of MedeliaCommunications. She’s also the founder of Women Certified and a leader in helping businesses market to women. Welcome Delia.
Delia Passi: Oh, it’s great to be here Susan. Thank you.
Susan Wilson Solovic: First, I’m very interested to learn more about women certified. What is woman certified?
Delia Passi: Well you know, we ask women about 4,000 women, almost two years ago, a very simple question. If you had better choice for choosing a sales or a service professional, if you could choose someone ho you knew would provide to a better experience, would you be more incline to choose that person? And they said, absolutely yes. 96% of them did. So, that was what planted the seed of woman certified.
A woman certified is a destination. It’s also a brand but for now, we’re launching it with womencertified.com, which is a destination site for women before they make a purchase decision to find the right sales and service professional in their area.
Susan Wilson Solovic: What a great idea. Now, how can businesses benefit from becoming women certified?
Delia Passi: You know women are such a powerful market. They account for 83% of all consumer purchases. They are impacting your business. Its hard to even imagine a business that is not impacted strongly by the woman consumer dollar. So you know, you look at small businesses today and what’s really unique about them is so many of the people within their business touch the consumer.
So she’s the one who is you know everyone within your organization will benefit by understanding her needs, her preferences, how to treat her as a consumer meet those expectations. Hopefully exceed those expectations.
So women certified basically helps small businesses, built business with women costumers.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Can you explain to me how the sales certification program works?
Delia Passi: Women certified is designed so that before you are profiled on women certified and women certified is a searchable data base. Basically, you put in your zip code. You put in the industry that you’re looking for and actual pop up the files on women certified professionals in your area that meet those qualifications. But to become women certified, you also have to meet our standards which means you have to take some learning courses that are going to teach you based on tons of research with thousands of women. What they expect in the buying process so we teach you how to better communicate with them, how to understand their needs during you know service and sales, to understand how to really listen. You know so that—
Susan Wilson Solovic: That’s an important one.
Delia Passi: The really important one. How to be more patient in the sales process whether from also how to close, how to build a refer on that work around the woman costumer. So were teaching you, we’re giving you all these tools. Once you passed this learning program and you become certified then your profile goes active and you are a woman certified professional that woman will trust.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Now, you just made an interesting point here because I guess it doesn’t have to be a business. It can be an individual sales person and then how does that work if you’re a sales person in a company and a company isn’t certified but you want to be certified?
Delia Passi: Well, everyone can be certified. You don’t have—in regardless if your—let’s say you work for RE/MAX, you know the real estate company but you’re an independent but yet your working under the corporate name, you and your entire office can get certified. Now remember, that what we’re certifying is not brands. We’re certifying people.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Okay, that make sense.
Delia Passi: Okay, so you know—so now, you as an individual. So, let’s say your office, because as we want to—everyone in our office wants to get certified, you would—everyone who wants to get profiled will go on take the test independently. Okay, pass if 85% or not we’ll make it a little tough here but it’s worth it because you’re going obviously, learn how to better sell to her and then you get profiles under your company brands.
Susan Wilson Solovic: So once the sales person is certified, what do they get then what’s the tangible results here?
Delia Passi: Well, you know everyone who is certified gets access to being searchable. Okay, that’s the most important thing. It’s a leave generator for you. Once you have your profile then omen are able to connect to you. They could actually set a performance right through women certified.
You will have a searchable data base so you know you’ll be able—when I meant—you will have back in reporting. So you as the individual will know how many women have your side. It’s kind of like a—it’s a back in reporting system just for you as a sales service professional. In addition to that, there are a lot of marketing tools that cost a lot of money if you had to order them independently but you know through women certified, you get access our sign to women newsletter. All of our marketing tool in your community tools, we give you press releases, ideas for direct mail campaigns, visuals, we really talk to you.
In addition to that, once you become women certified, your going to get a monthly reinforcement email that is going to give you a video demonstration on what to do or not to do in the sales process with women and that’s just a tip of the iceberg. You get power videos, it gives you reinforcement tools. The reason why we’re so committed to your success with women is because the better you can sell and service and provide the right type of service for women, the more successful we’ll be as a brand.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Sure.
Delia Passi: So it’s important to us to make sure that you’re doing it right.
Susan Wilson Solovic: What about—is there like some kind of seal or mark that they can put on their business card or something like that? I like the good house keeping seal of approval because otherwise, how the consumers know that you’re certified?
Delia Passi: Absolutely! Actually, when you do get women certified, you will have access to that logo and you’ll be able to put a logo on your business cards, on your letter head, you’ll even be able to order reporting with direct print companies so you’ll be able to order what do they call the stick—
Susan Wilson Solovic: Sticky stickers—
Delia Passi: Sticky thing that you put on your windows. That you could—tent cards, so if you are an office or a woman come, you could have little tent cards that, we are women certified professionals. You also get a pen and the pen is great. As soon as you get certified, a pen will be sent to you. It’s a beautiful, very well made pen with your name on it onto your certification. So this way, everybody knows when they see you that you are the person they want to do business with.
Susan Wilson Solovic: There’s a lot of support in the next year. It is expensive to get certified? How much does it cost?
Delia Passi: Well, actually it’s not expensive. When you think about you know all the return on investment it is—you know the return is pretty significant. We—it cost a $199.00 to become certified.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Oh, that’s very reasonable for what they get, certainly.
Delia Passi: For what they get, I mean the value, it’s about a $1000.00 a year versus worth of sales in marketing support. But hopefully, you’ll be able to take advantage of the SBTV discount.
Susan Wilson Solovic: There you go.
Delia Passi: And pay even half of that.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Sure.
Delia Passi: So, definitely look for on the sbtv side so you’ll be able to take advantage of your 50% discount and really reap the rewards, very inexpensive way.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Great! Let me ask the final question here, when someone is certified, are they always certified? Do they have to keep up their skills in some kind of a renewal testing?
Delia Passi: You are certified for the year. Okay, like any certification program, almost all certification programs is renewable and what we do to help you prepare for that is at the end of the year, you’ll have the option to renew that certification. It will cost you only $50.00 to do that. But you’ll have to take a refresher course or you’ll have the option of just taking those monthly educational programs, their 10 minutes and the accumulate hours and if you take everyone of those monthly ones and you do them then you’re automatically are titled to your certification.
Susan Wilson Solovic: So just like CE credits or CA credits?
Delia Passi: Exactly! It’s just like continuing education credits and we just want to make sure that you stay up to date with all the latest research on what women want on the buying process. It’s all there to help you build your business.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Very good, Delia, thanks very much for stopping by and sharing all that information with us and I hope you’d come back and keep us updated on the program.
Delia Passi: I absolutely will, thank you.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Thanks to all of you for joining us here on sbtv.com. Once again, I’m Susan Wilson Solovic and remember small business is our only business.
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