First impressions are so important – and they go on and on

I am reminded of this so often in business and life, yet we all seem to forget the lesson. On Friday I went to a store to purchase an item of a significant sum. There was only the shop demo item available. I asked if they could detach the item from the shelf and if I could purchase it. Their response was – why would ya?. Why would I indeed?

My response, I left and will never go back. Why wouldn’t I want to buy the store demo? It’s hadn’t been damaged and looked fine to me, and I could have it straight away instead of waiting for a few days for new stock to arrive. ‘Why Wouldn’t Ya!’. Obviously this retail store is doing way better than the rest of the retail stores in my town and do not need the business. I went online that evening and purchased my item from there.

We only have a few chances to impress in business and life. It is in those first few moments that decisions are made as to whether someone will buy or not, or like us or not. People buy from people they like – or they go elsewhere to a place that will deliver what they want, when and how they want if they are not impressed. Sadly, I am not overwhelmed with stories of organisations that do an amazing job of meeting their customer needs and responding appropriately to them. I do get to hear of some extraordinarily awful ones though.

Go ahead, think about it right now. When was the last time you were super impressed with the help and service you received?

I ask this question often in my training and coaching business.

And then I ask, what do you do to make a great impression on others?

When was the last time you really looked at the outside of your shop and see it as your customer sees it. Do you check to see if you and your team really respond positively to every request or query? Are we dressed to impress to get that job? How well do we attract the people we want into our lives? How easy is it to get a little lazy and think it doesn’t matter? Do we try an impress every time someone phones, emails or walks in the door? Remember, other people are not privy to what occurred a few minutes ago to you and have no idea what sort of day you are having. Nor do they really care. Sorry.

It takes many ‘touches’ to build a relationship of trust with a customer or a friend. And only a moment to break it.

Think about the impression you want to make today.