What is stereotyping? What’s it got to do with our business decision?>From Oxford's Dictionary of Business 1996...
Stereotyping n. "Making assumptions about individuals or groups based on information (which may or may not be valid) obtained before 
individual or group has been encountered. Once encountered, opinions formed may be based on dress, speech, gender, ethnic origin, nationality, and gestures. Unfortunately, human beings are liable to have selective prejudices towards their fellows, seeing only what they want to see and ignoring factors that do not fit in with their preconceived beliefs. They also tend to assume that all individuals of a group have same, or similar, characteristics..."
If you have in mind stereotypes of group your prospect is from, you at least have guidelines of how to attract him/her with your business proposal, how your sales letter should look like and what to mention in there.
You also get idea which groups of customers prefer you to drink with them, and which of them hate drinking partners. You know if you should communicate formally or casually, addressing person with first or last name. And you know if you should keep relationships strictly businesslike or if you could become friend with your customer without losing business.
However, some stereotypes are wrong and most of them are not accurate. I saw numbers of stereotypes being made from only one sample of a group. I actually made some of them myself. Once I went to Korea and taxi driver pushed me out of his cab because he did not understand what I was saying, and I kept telling people Koreans were rude. Of course there was no way for me to know if taxi driver was even a Korean, if he’d just had a bad day, or if he did not really mean to push me away (just waving).
