The Prospecting Professor

"Kiss Your Khakis Goodbye!"

Business casual is soooooooo over.

Behind our backs, Corporate America and clothing manufacturers (like dress-shirt makers) are conspiring to end the days of Dockers and flip-flops.

In 2005, 41% of U.S. companies allowed casual dress...down from 51% in 2001 according to a survey by the Society of Human Resource Management. In a separate survey by America's Research Group, 28% of Fortune 500 companies allowed casual dress in 1999...compared to under 10% today.

Sandals? Out! Logo t-shirts? Out! Jeans? Out! Spandex? Out! Midriff tops? Out! Sweat pants? Out! Bret Favre football jerseys? Way out!

Short Gap and Banana Republic! Buy Phillips Van Heusen!

There's a backlash going on towards the standards of dress that ran right past 'business casual'...and landed somewhere around 'extreme casual.' In today's highly competitive business world, corporations have decided that they can't afford to sacrifice their 'professional' image...which might be perceived as an endemic corporate weakness.

Business casual is out. Business professional is in... and the new staple in the professional wardrobe is the long-sleeve woven shirt.

Apparently, corporate managers missed the days when they could tell their colleagues to "roll up their sleeves, and get to work."

Speaking of woven shirts, what are the colors for 2006? Brown tones and primary colors are passe. French blue is a staple, and light blue is very strong. However, the green phenomena is very BIG, especially the lighter shades. Think pistachio or Shasta green.

Tune in tomorrow for an exciting discussion about how you can experiment with todays exciting new fabrics...not.

Business Casual

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have very little or no influence on society."...Mark Twain

Until the early to mid '90's, the boundaries between work and after-work fashion were clear and distinct: executive attire at the office, casual attire at home. As Exhibit #1, check out Ward Cleaver's fashion sense... and the obvious delineation between home and office.

During the last decade, contemporaneous with the dot-com era, the attitudes towards work attire changed. The dot-com phenomenon allowed workers to say, "It isn't how you dress, it's what you do that really determines how successful a business is." Ideas and creative thinking supplanted structure and tradition.

These days, many people in the workplace don't know the difference between a dress code and a zip code.

Without bemoaning the decline in workplace dress standards, The Prospecting Professor asks these questions:

• Have you ever felt that you had to apologize to a client or prospect for your casual dress?
• When you dress down, do you feel that you lose some professional credibility?
• Have you become a casualty of too much casualness?

If so, you might consider re-evaluating your wardrobe. The reality is that your clothes, appearance, and grooming really are the packaging of your own personal brand.

In the opinion of 'personal branding' maven, Lesley Everett, first impressions are formed within 15-30 seconds upon first meeting someone. Thereafter, it takes as much as 20 different impressions to alter the effect of the impression of the first meeting.

It wasn't so long ago that folks dressed up to take an airplane trip. Imagine that! Today, airline travel is more a case of  "where the uncomfortable are fed the inedible by the indifferent."

For those of us who interact with clients and prospects on a frequent basis, it is indisputable that they (clients/prospects) make judgements about us on the basis of our personal image. In today's image-conscious and visual world, this is an unavoidable truth. Since, our values, strengths, motivators, drivers and beliefs are being extrapolated from our dress, appearance, voice, body indicators, behavior and attitude...this should give us pause.

However, the good news is that we can control many aspects of what others see in us. Of course, if we project an image of ourselves that is false, we will be 'caught' rather quickly. On the other hand, if our 'personal brand' portrays our genuine uniqueness and individuality, that's the important element.

Speaking of the portrayal of false images, and looping back to the Ward Cleaver reference...remember Eddie Haskell, "That's a lovely dress you're wearing Mrs. Cleaver"? You knew that Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver were completely attuned to Eddie's two-faced demeanor.

Developing a consistent 'personal brand' is one thing. Duplicitous superficiality is another.

First Impressions

Lesley Everett is the founder of Walking Tall, "Europe's Leading Personal Branding Company." As such, she has some strongly held views on how we develop our "personal brand." Our "personal brand" is the collection of ideas people have about us, when they think about us. In essence, it is what is said about us when we are not there, and how we are described to others.

One of the most important components of our personal brand is the First Impression.

A first impression is formed within the first five to seven seconds of meeting someone. Within the next five seconds, we can add another 50% to that impression. Ms. Everett's research indicates that it takes another 20 further experiences with someone...to change a first impression...which means that the first impressions that we project are critically important in any new relationship.

The implications of this are pretty scary, when you think about it. Within 15-30 seconds, we have been judged on all sorts of  things: our credibility, our professionalism, our trustworthiness, our friendliness, our approachability, our creativity...and  so on.

What others do when  they take in all of the elements that create a first impression (and what we do when we meet others) is to scan our whole bodies for all of the non-verbal clues and signals that create a first impression. This includes everything about us:

• Dress and grooming
• Body language
• Smiling..or not
• Posture
• Eye contact

You have, no doubt, heard the phrase, "You never get a chance to make a first impression." The good news is that we have the ability to create what we want to be 'famous' for, when we go about developing our own personal brand.

E-mail + Emotion ='s E-Risky

Have you ever sent an e-mail where the tone that you intended...was completely misread by the recipient?

You aren't alone...in fact, it happens all of the time.

In a recent study by psychologists Justin Kruger PhD, and his colleague Nicholas Epley PhD, they help explain why electronic misunderstandings occur so frequently "See article". When we send e-mails, we all overestimate both our ability to convey our intended tone...be it sarcastic, serious, or funny...as well as our ability to interpret the tone of messages that we receive.

Kruger and Epley found that people are much better at communicating and interpreting TONE in vocal messages than in text-based ones. In their experiment, they tested two groups of undergraduate students. The first group read statements into a tape recorder...taking either a sarcastic or serious tone...while the second group e-mailed identical statements. The participants then listened, or read, their partners' statements, and guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in the answers.

The partners who read the statements over e-mail had only a 56% success rate at interpreting the correct tone...not much better than chance!

The reasons for the misinterpreted e-mails are that a great deal of communication depends not only on what is said, but how it is said. These "paralinguistic clues" such as gesture, inflection, pronunciation, vocal expression, fluency, and tone are each important clues to the speaker's meaning. Moreover, ego-centrism plays an important role in this communication disconnect. People have a difficult time detaching themselves from their own perspectives and understanding how other people will interpret them.

Here's what it boils down to...the ease and speed with which e-mail (or instant messaging) triggers exchanges makes it seem less like written communication, and more like a face-to-face transaction. Wrong! It's not.

There's a simple solution to limiting the possibility that your message gets heard as you intended it...use the phone. E-mail is fine if you just want to communicate content. However, if you are sending any emotional material...Caveat Emailori! (Let the e-mailer beware.)

"Would you do that if the Queen were here?"

My grandmother was a tad eccentric. She was Canadian...and was raised during the tail-end of the Victorian Era. She considered it her responsibility to impart the "proper" manners to her grandchildren. During meals, when I transgressed with some egregious table-manner faux pas, she was not hesitant in her kindly reprimand. She would look at me in her serious manner and say, "Now Christopher... would you do that if the Queen were here?"  When you are six years old, how do you respond to this question?

My grandmother would like Lydia Ramsey. Lydia Ramsey is a business etiquette expert who "helps people promote themselves and grow their business by showing them how to keep their feet out of their mouths and egg off their faces." Her insights can be found on her website, www.mannersthatsell.com.

In sales, first impressions are everything. What's that old aphorism? "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." For salespersons, meeting and greeting...making initial contacts...are a way of life. Here are some of Lydia Ramsey's simple strategies that that ensure that a first impression...is a good one.

1. If you are sitting down and waiting for a prospect, stand up to greet them when they arrive. Always engage the other person as an equal...eyeball-to-eyeball. If you are in a position where standing is impossible, e.g. a crowded conference table, offer a brief apology and explanation, such as, "Please excuse me for not getting up. I need more legroom."
2. Smile...and make direct eye contact. There is nothing more disconcerting than greeting someone who is staring off somewhere else, towards the floor, etc.
3. Introduce yourself immediately. Ofttimes, when we meet someone for the first time in a group setting, there can be awkward pauses before introductions,when one person waits for the other. Avoid these moments by initiating a forthright introduction.
4. Offer a firm handshake...regardless of the gender of the other person. Many years past, old etiquette dictated that you would wait until a woman extended her hand, and only then did you extend your hand. Contemporary etiquette allows for either the man or the woman to extend a hand first. "Firm" does not mean a bone-crusher either. Typically, a man's upper body strength is 40% greater than a woman's. Also, avoid the double-hand handshake. This is too familiar when you greet someone for the first time.
5. When greeting a couple, whose hand do you shake first? The risk if you extend your hand to one side of the couple, is that the other person might think, "I count for less." A solution may be to extend your hand out in the general vicinity of both...and shake whatever hand reaches you first. If there is a somewhat clumsy bit of hand histrionics during this exchange, make a joke. It can break the ice.
6. Learn how to make smooth introductions. In business, always introduce "less important" to "more important" people. Say the name of the "more important" person first, followed by the words, "I'd like to introduce," then give the other person's name.
7. Pay attention to names. Focus, concentrate, and repeat the name in your head as soon as you hear it, as a memory aid. If you have time after the introduction, repeat the name a third time...while looking at the person's face. (If the other person is looking at you at the time, don't stare, and smile back.)

Lydia Ramsey maintains that, in a competitive business age where differences between one company and the next is minute, people skills ARE the difference. As such, business etiquette, i.e. behaving with kindness and courtesy, can be the deal-making difference.