This past week, I watched a video of our youngest granddaughter that Ian posted on Facebook. He captured her as she made her first efforts to stand. What a treat! She was so proud of herself and excited as she wobbled trying to learn balance. She had a good grip on the pole she’d used to pull herself up. She’d let go with only one hand just pleased as could be. Naturally, daddy heaped praise on her too.
I often think about the parallel in sales and marketing to infants learning to stand, walk and talk. It fascinates me that infants are risk takers. Survival demands it. When we learn to stand and then to walk, we spend more time falling than we do standing or walking. Yet somewhere along the line we forget that all life’s activity takes failure to succeed at new skills. This is true especially true in sales and marketing. The more complex something is, the more failure we’ll have to deal with. Good sales ability involves numerous skills, each of which we must master. [...]
It’s an established fact that we never get a second chance to make a good first impression. For salespeople, this is important if you want to get to the top of your profession. Because I know that we communicate through clothes, I was fascinated with Suzanne Falter-Barns’ interview of Kim Foley, “How to Dress for Credibility.” Ms. Foley is a Washington, DC-based “stylist to the stars.” She’s given advice to Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton and as well as to network news and sports anchors and Fortune 500 companies on how to dress to impress.
During this podcast, Kim gave a variety of really excellent tips on basic color schemes and other ideas that are important to making the right impression. Interestingly, it is not necessary to spend lots of money to get the right look. It’s far more important to get the drape and hang of your clothing correct. You want it to fit you, whatever you size.
Your clothes communicate silently for you, whether you know it or not. Learning how to use your clothes to convey the image of competence and confidence merely reinforces your presentation. Refusing to learn means your appearance can undermine all your hard [...]
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