297: You Have Three Seconds For An Effective First impression

<p>In our presentation training classes we ask the participants, “how long does it take for you to make a judgment about someone you are meeting for the first time?”.  How about you?  How long do you take to make a judgment about someone you are meeting for the first time?  It used to be people in our classes would say 30 seconds, others would say up to a couple of minutes.  Today, the answers are now down to three seconds! </p> <p> </p> <p>What does that mean for us in sales? We have such a small window to make that good first impression but are we prepared?  However are you really planning your first impression or are you leaving it to random chance?</p> <p> </p> <p>Let’s work on a couple of areas to build that excellent first impression.</p> <p> </p> <p>Visual</p> <p> </p> <p>(1) Dress for success because we make 100% of our assumptions about your professionalism, reliability and trustworthiness based on how you look, before we even talk with you.  Dr. Albert Mehrabian’s research showed that we need what we say, to match up with how we are saying it, to grab people’s attention with our words.  When people see us for the first time, all they have to go on is what they see in front of them.</p> <p> </p> <p>What does that mean?  Let’s use this check list of things not to do.  It is hard to argue you are reliable around the quality of your solution, when your shoes are scuffed. They need to be polished to a mirror sheen.  The same thing goes for food stains on your clothes that obviously have not been dry cleaned.  You want to seem professional, but your hair is messy and your clothes don’t fit well anymore, because you have put on some weight.</p> <p> </p> <p>For men, I often see an old looking pants belt that should be replaced or it is brown in colour, when they are wearing black shoes.  Is this hard to get right? What about when the tie knot is loose and not tight against the collar.  Are you really telling me you are great with your attention to detail, when you look like this?</p> <p> </p> <p>(2) When we mee