First Impressions Are Often Not What You Think!
Everyone will attest to the importance of making a great first impression with a prospective client. While you can later stub your toe and destroy what a good first impression did for you, you can ALMOST NEVER recover from a bad first impression! But where some businesses miss the mark is in realizing what all goes into making a great “Knock Their Socks Off!” first impression. Let’s explore that a bit.
First of all, what is a first impression? Most people think that it’s when the salesperson first shows up to visit the homeowner. In most cases, those people are WRONG! While that may be the first impression that the actual salesperson makes on your prospect (and our next information will include some great ideas for making that a great first impression), the first impression of your company comes way before that in most cases. Usually, the first impression your company makes on a prospect comes in the form of one of the following:
- Your various advertisements and marketing campaigns including your corporate branding, your website, and your social media sites
- The jobsites where your crews are working
- Your person who answers the phone
- Your past customers who talk about you to their friends and neighbors
- (And many other possibilities)
Even beyond the damage that a bad first impression of your salesperson can cause, these other first impressions can destroy your company’s opportunity to ever even talk with the prospective customer! So, what does that mean? Your company MUST – I repeat, MUST – be on its toes at all times and constantly put its best foot forward. Marketing costs per sale keep increasing and there is no end in sight to that. Don’t be your own worst enemy and increase your marketing costs by blowing potential leads before they are even leads!
Across the wide variety of first impressions your company can make, you must always be the following:
- Professional
- Stable and a part of the community
- Caring and solutions-focused
- ORGANIZED, neat, and orderly
- Friendly, inviting, optimistic, and NEVER “too busy” to talk with a customer
- Knowledgeable (but NOT a “Know-It-All”) and experienced
To accomplish these things, you MUST CONSTANTLY define and emphasize your corporate branding and culture to your entire company. Your first impression could occur with ANY PERSON within your organization, or with ANY PAST CUSTOMER, and it could occur at ANY TIME!
Until our next issue when we will focus on on the salesperson’s first impression, give some thought to the wide variety of first impression opportunities your company has on prospective customers. Put yourself in their shoes. What messages are your first impressions sending? Are you consistently giving your company the BEST POSSIBLE chance to make a great first impression that leads to a successful sale? If not, institute some changes to your processes and procedures today! Quit inadvertently increasing your own marketing costs!
Please feel free to contact me anytime at tmiller@isaiahindustries.com to discuss this or other issues pertaining to marketing and in-home sales.
Todd Miller has spent his entire career in the metal building products manufacturing industry. He is president of Isaiah Industries, an organization recognized as one of the world’s leading metal roofing manufacturers. Todd is currently Vice President of the MRA (Metal Roofing Association) and a Past Chair of MCA (Metal Construction Association). Through his website, he strives to raise the bar on standards and practices to provide property owners with the best possible products for successful roofing projects.
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