Looks DO matter

Posted September 10th, 2007 by Dr James Pratt

In my last blog I wrote about the importance of environmental appearance as it relates to first impressions. A related matter is the personal appearance of the people your customers will deal with.

It's important to understand that most customer impressions are formed with non-verbal input not verbal. The appearance your people present, the image they offer will have much more impact than whatever they say.

In the training and consulting work that I do with doctor's, for example, I find definite measurable differences in their practices related to the packaging.

By packaging I mean the attire of the doctor and the staff and I do suggest certain, specific modes of dress to those people.

In my own business activities, I most often wear a dress shirt and tie and suit. Usually when I am asked to give a presentation I wear a suit. I'll be the first to tell you that I think the necktie is a stupid, useless invention. I've lived in cold climates and can tell you
that it does nothing to keep you warm. For tall guys like me a necktie's too short to hold up your drawers. I mean it does nothing.

But some years ago I sat across the desk from a deputy chairperson and had him actually say to me, "You can't be president of a company - you're not even wearing a tie."

Sure that's stupid, but it happened and it brings up two interesting success principles.

One - for every ten that say it there are ten thousand who think it.

Two - would you rather be right or rich?

You see when we develop marketing and business strategies we can't base our thinking on what should be, our thinking has to be based on what is. I think an important part of effective customer relations is a combination of all these preliminary impression factors.

Your business has to clearly and immediately demonstrate that it lives up to its advertised promise. In the first impression stage courtesy, competence and integrity has to be communicated.

Okay, now we've talked about first impressions as it relates to customer relations, but what can you do after the initial contact in order to foster customer retention?


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