Owner of Retail Staffing and CEO of Midwest Merchandising, Teresa Bradford, ends much of her correspondence with these memorable words: You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. History credits Will Rogers (and coincidently, Oscar Wilde) with this pithy bit of wisdom, but truth be told, the concept ages well. American novelist Cynthia Ozick, author of The Shawl, put it another way: Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.
Client or representative—actually all sentient human beings make spontaneous judgments about the character traits of others upon a shocking mere tidbit of information. A seminal work by Harriet Over, Adam Eggleston and Richard Cook explores the concept of Trait Inference Mapping (TIM), and in so doing, explain both the history and the implications of first impressions. Notably, the average person forms conclusions on another’s character in as little as 33 milliseconds, and with incredible accuracy, I might add. What on earth is 33 ms? A wordsmith like me had to look it up. It is .033 seconds. Yes. It’s a blink of the eye. And it appears Elliott Abrams was off by a lot in the world of milliseconds.
We begin assessing the character of others through an acquired process of cultural learning. From a young age we see a person, evaluate the person’s behavior, and then catalog the reference to be used over and over again in contexts as dissimilar as interviews, business appointments and meeting a stranger on the street. In other words, your sweet old mother’s sage advice is based on fact: Shine your shoes and smile. First impressions matter.
What does this mean if you are a client seeking to represent your brand? It means you search out the best field of reps to create a favorable response in shoppers. It matters how your products are placed on a shelf. It matters if the shelves are clean. It matters if labels face forward. First impressions of your product matter, and you know that. You put endless hours into the right label and verbiage to create the chemistry which culminates in a sale, but the end game is just as important as concept development. Trust us to make that good impression.
What does that mean if you are a representative? It means how you dress matters. How you comb your hair matters. Your attitude as you meet the vendor matters. Your nonverbal body language as you dust shelves and arrange product matters. It all matters. Our founder, Teresa Bradford goes to great length to communicate this concept to you.
Because that’s all you got…The blink of an eye to represent yourself to a stranger as being honest, charming, funny, clever…and worthy of a second glance. When I first read Blink (The Power of Thinking Without Thinking) by Malcom Gladwell, I was struck by one quote in particular: The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter. Truth. In this golden age of college diplomas handed out like candy, personal computers and artificial intelligence, we marinate in a veritable sea of knowledge; but the trainwrecks of people who fail in personal relationships suggests we are drowning in our understanding of human behavior. It means there exists a dreadful shortfall in our ability to trust what we know to be true. We second guess ourselves and refuse to learn from experience. In the process we make dreadful and costly mistakes. We also fail to take shoe shining into account on a daily basis.
If you gain nothing else from this short blog, remember to don a good impression every morning. Put it on as you would a Sunday suit. Wear it all day long. And spend some time each night before you retire contemplating what you learned in the course of the day. You’ll make better first impressions and better judgments of human character as well. John Locke, a philosopher from the 1600’s, said, “First impressions are the most lasting.” He wasn’t wrong. It’s all communicated in the blink of an eye and the shine of your footwear. And don’t forget to call your mother once in a while.
