Friend or Foe, the Importance of Creating Great First Impressions - Part 2

Friend or Foe, the Importance of Creating Great First Impressions - Part 2

Other factors, which will influence the 'Gatekeepers' decision whether you are friend or foe, are, your appearance, clothes, smell, enthusiasm and posture. Once you're past this initial first impression you can get on with developing a relationship with your prospect.

Professor Albert Mehrabian of UCLA broke communication down into three "V's" as follows:

- Verbal: The message itself; i.e. the words you use.
- Vocal: The sound of your voice, intonation, projection, pitch and speed of your voice.
- Visual: The posture and gestures, facial expression and eye movement that people see.

The Thomas Gordon Institute added another dimension to this research and came up with:

- Words: Verbal
- Voice: Vocal
- Face: Visual
- Body: Visual

Both institutions measured the effectiveness of each component of communication and it's contribution to believability. Here are the results of their respective research:

UCLA
Verbal 7%
Vocal 38%
Visual 55%
TOTAL: 100%

Thomas Gordon
Words 7%
Voice 23%
Face 35%
Body 35%
TOTAL: 100%

So, the first step in delivering Great Customer Service to Create Great Sales is:
Approach and greet your suspect/prospect with open, friendly body language coupled with soothing, gentle voice modulation. Our total focus in this step is to get past the 'Gatekeeper' so that we develop and build rapport and open the prospect's message receptors. The words themselves are not that important, a simple "Hi, how are you today," is a good ice breaker.