Episode #46 One Minute To Star

What are you like on creating first impressions with people you meet for the first time? We are all aware that establishing “know, like and trust” relationships with clients are three key ingredients for success in business. What about the like and trust bits? The formation of first impressions in business has become so microscopically short today, we really need to have these well thought through and well organized. People we meet will form an impression of us, one way or the other, that is for sure, so we need to be designing the outcome we want from the very start. How can we do that in a way that gets us off to a flying start? What things do we need to be doing and also what things do we need to be avoiding. Are you well prepared for creating an outstanding first impression with potential clients?

Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show"

Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately.

Japan really loves luxury goods, especially high end handbags, jewelry and expensive watches. It also likes new things too, so there is a big market for selling second hand luxury items and replacing them with newer styles. According to a government report, the national resale market for used luxury goods in Japan is two hundred billion yen. In the resale arena, big players are Yahoo’s auction website, Japan’s first unicorn Mercari with a marketplace app and a new player called Sou. Sou is pawnshop which specializes in buying luxury goods only. There are 57 stores in Japan, which are stylish locations where people can sell their luxury goods and feel good about it. Business has been so successful, Sou founder Shinsuke Sakimoto took the company public lately. When a pawnshop specializing in luxury goods can be listed, you know this is a special market for high end products.

In other news, the national police agency reports that there has been a significant increase in juvenile fraud cases, totaling seventeen and a half billion in financial damage in just the first half of 2018. These usually involve criminals recruiting young people to impersonate elderly people’s children and asking for money for an emergency. The number of fourteen to nineteen year olds arrested for these crimes has doubled. People aged sixty five and older accounted for nearly seventy six percent of the cases. Japan is a very honest country, so criminals prey on the innocence and naivety of the older generation, a rapidly growing segment of the population. Your grandson rings you in a panic, is barely coherent on the phone, but you understand he needs money right now or something totally horrendous will happen to him. So you quickly pay the money in haste and then repent at leisure.

This is episode number #46 and we are talking about One Minute To Star. Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.

Meeting new business contacts, expanding personal networks, promoting a reliable, trustworthy “Brand You” are the basics of business. By the way, even if our job title doesn’t explicitly mention “sales and marketing” we are all in sales and marketing. In modern commerce, even professionals in non-traditional sales roles like accountants, lawyers, dentists, engineers, architects, analysts, consultants all need to pitch their expertise to get new clients. This may not have been the case in the past, but this is the “new black” of the professions. When we try to influence a decision – buy my widget, use my service, fund this project, open a new market or even where shall we go for lunch - these are all sales and marketing efforts to get others to follow our ideas. Don’t miss this change and instead master the process, such that you get the business and not your competition.

By the way, first impressions are so critical. When I ask my class participants during sales training, how long does it take to form an impression of someone, the range of answers is usually between 2 and 5 seconds. Think about that. We are all so quick to judgment, we are shockers! An opinion is formed immediately and it takes quite a bit of effort to unwind a negative first impression. We would have to be crazy to leave that first impressions to random luck or happenstance.

Now given our first interactions with strangers are so important, are we getting the best result for ourselves and organisation? When we are out there representing our company and someone asks us, can we succinctly explain what we do, in a clear, informative, impressive and memorable manner? Based on my experience and observations from attendance at thousands of networking events, there is a lot of room for improvement. Those from the so-called professions are usually the worst!

An excellent formula is called the Wow & How. When we meet someone for the first time, after examining their business card, we should get the ball rolling and ask them about their business. Why don’t we just seize the moment and jump in and start impressing them with information about us and what it is we do? Well, you could do that but it is a hit and miss approach. We know that people love to talk about themselves, so don’t deny the potential client that chance. We also learn more by listening than speaking and so having them lead off is a win-win.

Hearing what they do also assists us in considering how best to explain what we do. We can emphasise certain aspects that we believe would appeal to them, based on what they have just told us, about what they are doing. If their industry has relevancy for something we have done, then we can mention that point and start building our credibility. We may have a business contact who can assist them, making ourselves valuable in the process. They may mention an issue and bingo, we are the solution, so we can zero in on learning more about the concrete problem.

By listening to them speak, we can also gauge their preferred personality type. We can then adjust our communication style to best suit their preference for interaction. If we notice, for example, that they are a very detail oriented person, we might add in more concrete detail than normal to explain what it is we do. If you are speaking with an accountant, three decimal places when quoting numbers is always appreciated! The opposite tack is best applied to big picture people - don’t kill them with the micro detail. If they are fast paced, then we need to speak faster and with more energy than normal. If they are very calm and considered, drop your voice and lower your energy to mirror them. Check you are not standing too close to them and give them some space.

Generally speaking, we all like people more who are like us. By adjusting our own style to match them, we are more quickly able to enhance our communication and understanding. Does this mean we have to be a schizophrenic with conflicting personality styles? No, but it does require that we master the language styles of the four main personality styles – Expressive, Driver, Analtyical and Amiable.

When it is our turn to explain what we do, we can really get things moving by using a three step approach:

1. We start with a proposition that they can easily agree with. For example, in the case of my training business: “You know how companies often really struggle with training their staff. They get really frustrated that the training doesn’t produce the results they require” . The listener by this time is sagely nodding and silently voicing their agreement, because they can mentally picture the problem.

We embed a pregnant pause, then add the mega attention grabber, almost as a throw away line - “Well, we fix that completely”. At this point, we become as silent as the tomb and do not utter any follow up to our bold statement.
Their immediate internal mental reaction is “Wow, that sounds amazing” .Then their buyer supreme skepticism kicks in and they ask, “Oh yeah, so Howdo you do that?”.

They have asked the question from their side now, so this allows us to subtly lead with our differentiable advantage in the marketplace. This is brilliant, because we are responding to their request for more information and unlike everyone else, we are not pushing our unique selling points down their throats.

Importantly, our answer is more about the Whatwe do, rather than the Howwe do it. We do this on purpose, because we want to explain the precise How in some more detail later, in the comfort of their office, rather than in short abbreviated form at a noisy, distracting and crowded networking event.

So our answer would go like this: “Dale Carnegie has been around for a long time, so we have proven methods which trigger the behavior change needed to get the staff to produce outperformance”.

The explanation should be succinct and only take about thirty seconds, so each word is vital. The delivery must be practised and perfected beforehand. The delivery must be relaxed, purposeful and voiced with confidence. Simple things which appear effortless are often complex to perfect. There may be a lot of re-writing, before you can find the economy of words needed to get across the concept in such a way, the listener is drawn in to want to hear more on the How. This is the goal – the followup conversation based on interest established at the first meeting. From the Howyou bridge into a suggestion that you both get together so you can explain how you weave all of this magic.

At the next business soirée you attend, roll out the Wow & How formula, delivered in the potential client’s preferred communication style and see the results. Study their reaction very carefully and keep adjusting the content, until you find the “all killer, no filler” combination that works best.

Every single person you meet judges your entire organisation and business on you. That is a heavy burden and one we have to master. Remember you only get one shot at a positive first impression, so let’s not leave that creation process to random chance

Action Steps

1. Understand that we are all in sales and marketing
2. When meeting someone at a networking event, have them tell you what they do, before you introduce your business
3. Listen carefully for their preferred communication style
4. Tell them how you are the one to fix the business problem
5. Create the opportunity to meet again for a business discussion