The Importance of the First 30 Seconds

A question that is often asked on sales training courses is ‘how should I dress?’ I think this is a vitally important question. You see a prospect will subconsciously have a perception of you built up in their mind in the first 30 seconds to 1 minute of a sales call.

The old saying you only get one chance to make a good first impression is vital. Sales training courses will tell you that these first introductions are vital and we all know the importance of the firm but not wrestle mania type hand shake as opposed to the wet fish hand shake. We also know the importance of eye contact although we must always consider that all cultures are not the same and eye contact, handshakes etc may not be correct in some cultures.

When we think about eye contact, we really do tend to think of looking at someone in the eyes, but this s not necessarily true. Eye contact is really the face and the easiest way to think of this is if you were to imagine a triangle with the base line going across the eyebrows and the point of the triangle being the chin then eye contact is any of that space within the triangle. Eye to eye contact is slightly different and is known as the 2 I’s of eye contact the 2 Is stand for Intimate or Intimidating, so when your next sales training course talks about eye contact remember it is not really eyeball to eyeball.

So going back to that all important question; ‘how should I dress? It is as important to look and dress well, as it is to have good closing skills in a sale. Of course what you are selling and the sales environment you are working in will determine how you should dress, so there is no standard answer. I was told many years ago on a sales training course that sales people should always dress like the type of person that the prospect would go to for advice. Although this is not very clear it still does give an idea of how we should dress going in to a sales call.

The other thing with our dress sense is the better we feel about ourselves the more likely we are to sell. So if we think about it this way, how often have you been invited to a wedding and we go out and purchase new clothes for the occasion, the day of the wedding comes we obviously shower and put on the new clothes, we feel great.

In the one minute manager series books which are more geared towards management training than sales training it clearly states ‘people who feel good about themselves produce good results’

Sales training courses all over the country will emphasise the importance of first impressions and remember the first 30 seconds can count more than the next hour.