No one likes to be rejected.  Whether you’re asking a woman out to dinner or asking her to try your product, hearing the words “No, thanks” is a downer, right?

Hearing “No, thanks” over and over again? That can crush your ego in the case of the dinner date and devastate your business in the case of promoting your product.

Now I don’t know how to help you get a yes out of a potential date and avoid the dreaded “table for one”  – but I do have some insider info that can increase your chances of hearing “yes” from a potential customer.

Getting to “yes” may be as simple as matching your marketing message to her mood. A study by parenting magazine revealed that women have distinct preferences for different types of promotions.

• Mornings and evenings are often hectic and rushed.  It takes a lot to get a woman’s attention in the morning.  If you manage to do so, you need to be quick, clear and concise.  Otherwise she’ll be too distracted to take action.

• Afternoons are slower paced.  Women have the time and are able to focus more, so they are most responsive to informative promotions or educational activities at this time.

• Nights are for winding down and relaxing.  Women are more receptive to quirky, offbeat and fun messages at night.

• Weekends are all about fun.  Funny and entertaining messages appealed to women best over the weekends.

So, how can you use this to your advantage?  If you use radio or television in your media mix, you know exactly when your ads will play.  Simply match your ad to her mood given the guidelines above.

But what about online marketing? Here’s how can you use this information to make your list more responsive:

• Emails – you can control when you send them, but you can’t control when she opens them.  One thing you can do is send broadcasts at different times of the day, then watch and see when the majority of people open your message.  It’s not a foolproof plan, because the subject line will affect your open rate.  But if you do find a consistent trend in when your emails are opened, you can tailor the tone of the message accordingly.

• Teleseminars – The results of the study indicate that afternoons may be best for teleseminars, particularly if your market is dominated by at-home-moms.  If you normally hold your teleseminars in the evenings, you may want to try an afternoon time slot for a change.  If that isn’t possible, schedule a Q&A call on an afternoon a few days after the call download is available.  Even if attendance is low on the Q&A, you’ll still spike the number of people that hear the call because they’ll want to listen to it before the Q&A.

• Fun Stuff – Did you see a funny video you want to share with your list? Maybe you have a funny story to share with them?  Send it out on Saturday morning.  They’ll have more time to watch the video and you’ll become like part of their weekend fun.

Keep this information in mind when planning your promotions and you’ll have more women saying “yes” to what you have to offer.

Is she a Baby Boomer or a GenX? Was her British invasion The Beatles or Duran Duran? What’s her income range? Is she urban or rural? Red state or blue state? Married with kids or single and loving it? Is she Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, or Samantha? (If you’re in the women’s market and you don’t know who they are- catch up!)

You’re probably thinking Yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don’t know.

Heres the thing. Pinning down the demographics of your target market only scratches the surface. What you may not realize is this: with women, you have to go deeper.

At least 50% of my current clients are with me because they didn’t go deep enough. Even after crafting campaigns that match the age, sex, income, and education levels of their market they sought me out because their results told them they missed the mark. Striking the mother load of the women’s market goes further than conventional market segmentation.

You see, once you know your prospects age, affluence, and social tendencies you need to drill down several more levels. Because just like populations can be segmented by desired characteristics for effective targeted marketing, an individual – particularly a woman – can be as well.

On any given day, one woman fulfills a multitude of roles. Mom, wife, ex-wife, daughter, boss, employee, volunteer, caregiver, sister, friend you get the idea.

To really sell your product you need to know what role she’s fulfilling that generates a need for your product or services her idiodemographic.

Step into her shoes as she’s filling that role and get under her skin. If your product is for exasperated mothers, appealing to her competency as a leader in the corporate world can cause your campaign to fall flat on its face. She may be a skilled vice president who is proud of her work, but believe me, you’re pushing the wrong buttons at the wrong time, and she isn’t going to buy.

Smart companies rely on funnel vision for their marketing. By starting with the broad demographics most businesses are intimately familiar with, then drilling down to the idiodemographic characteristics of your ideal prospect, your marketing message pierces to the heart of her motivation.

You need funnel vision to reach the one woman who has agonized, fretted, and lost sleep over the very problem you can solve when your ad hits the newsstands or airwaves. And shell know, deep in her core, that your product or service is exactly what she needs and she wont rest until she has it.

Done right, your deeply targeted message will have a domino-effect transmission, moving from emotion, to pocketbook, and into the complex referral network so characteristic of women who are satisfied customers. Funnel vision is the one of the quickest ways to devise an effective campaign strategy that resonates with your ideal prospect immediately. Its the difference between reaching and connecting. Anyone can reach women. To sell to women, you have to connect with women.

When deciding whether or not to purchase a product or service, virtually all women stop to consider what effect their purchase will have on those around them.

Always remember when you’re marketing to women, that women are inclusive. Whether husbands, parents, sisters, children, friends, bosses and virtually everyone else in their inner circle realize it or not, women think about them as part of the pre-purchase process.

In their book Don’t Think Pink Lisa Johnson and Andrea Learned describe this as constituent-driven decision making.

Will these heels make me taller than Mike? Is this new flooring going to trip Mom when she visits? How will changing my investment strategy affect our plans to buy Lindsey’s car in April? Which week will my vacation least impact everyone at the office?

Women’s heads race with questions like this constantly.

My mother is a perfect example, but you need a little background for this to make sense. Back in 1999, my husband Joe had brain surgery (he’s doing very well, thanks!) which slightly impaired his left side of his body.

Now, although we live over live over 800 miles away and visit less than once a year, Joe played a prominent role in Mom’s decision making when she shopped for new sofas and chairs. For her, one of the make-or-break factors when buying furniture was “Will my son-in-law be able to sit and stand easily?”

If making a decision on a sofa based on an annual visit from your son-in-law who lives 800 miles away isn’t constituent-driven decision making, I don’t know what is!

What you need to know about constituent-driven decision making is this: If you fail to address how the benefits of your product or service ripple out beyond her personal experience, then you’re missing a critical component in your sales message.

After you’ve fully demonstrated how your product or service will make life easier for her, go a little further. Let her know how her loved ones and friends will benefit, even tangentially, after she makes her purchase.

Doing so will help you stand out among your competition and just may win you a lifelong customer!

After one of his lectures, Tom was approached by a man in the audience. Turns out, this wasn’t the first time the man had seen Tom speak.

At an earlier event, Tom had insisted that businesses open their eyes to the power of the women’s market and encouraged them to, at the very least to take a good hard look at who was really buying their products and services.

This man took Tom’s advice, and quickly tracked down information on who was ponying up the cash for his large ticket super-macho merchandise.

Turns out the audience member wanted to shake Tom’s hand and thank him for the advice that spurred him into action, because he was shocked to discover that 85% of his product sales were to women! His product? Riding lawn mowers.

So I encourage all of you to do the same. Do some digging. You just may be surprised to find more Allisons, Torys, and Katies on your sales slips than Toms, Dicks, & Harrys.