The Five Seconds When You Can Lose a Prospect

Projecting energy and confidence

The first microsecond that prospects lay eyes on you, they form an impression, whether positive, negative or somewhere in between. The first thing they’ll notice is your energy level – do you project a sense of confidence in how you present yourself?

In a popular TED talk, Harvard Business School’s Amy Cuddy describes research on how body language shapes how you’re perceived and changes your actual performance. When walking out to meet clients or prospects, one advisor takes a moment to raise herself to her full height and consciously increases the pace at which she walks, with the goal of projecting a sense of energy and confidence.

To project confidence, you have to be fully engaged and set aside all distractions. That means that you should review the prospect file beforehand, so you aren’t scrambling for a last-minute review of notes before greeting prospects. And whether meeting prospects on their turf or yours, it means that you should build in a 15-minute buffer so that you aren’t rushing to make a meeting on time.

Three final tips

Three final details can make the first five seconds with prospects work for you – dress, eye contact and smile.

A recent article highlights the importance of dress in shaping initial impressions. As a general rule, you want to adapt your clothes to your marketplace, but you’ll seldom go wrong by erring on the side of being conservative.

Eye contact when you first meet someone is key. In this video, consultant Nick Boothman suggests that you get in the habit of noticing people’s eye color when you first meet, as a way of forcing yourself to make eye contact.

Finally, a genuine smile when you greet prospects conveys confidence and warmth and increases the odds that they will feel comfortable. Getting into the habit of putting a smile on your face when you greet someone is a little thing that pays big dividends.

Individually, none of these steps will make a big change in the initial perception from prospects. But taken together, they increase the odds of a successful outcome by creating a positive predisposition beforehand, managing how prospects perceive your office and presenting yourself professionally.

Most important, when you go out to meet a client or a prospect, develop the habit of automatically raising your energy level, making eye contact and smiling. As in life in general, it’s the little things that make a big difference.

Dan Richards conducts programs to help advisors gain and retain clients and is an award winning faculty member in the MBA program at the University of Toronto. To see more of his written commentaries, go to www.danrichards.com or here for his videos.

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