You can’t improve on nothing

In order to improve, there must be something to improve upon.

How many first impressions do you get with someone? Of course, just one. So it has to be perfect, right?

We just talked about templating things and how building from an existing foundation allows you to grow effectively. But building from an existing foundation means that there has to be a foundation to build on. You can’t build up to your first impression… which means it’s the first impression that gets built on.

I heard Tony Robbins say that “Style is the most important thing…intially.” I’m not sure if he took that quote from someone else because really, we’ve all heard something like that before. Perhaps “Beauty is only skin deep” is a good example. The point is that you should work hard to make a good first impression, but that’s only going to get you to the next meeting or two. After that, it’s about the value you bring, the substance underneath the skin.

In sales, again and again, what you’re doing is establishing relationships so that you can exchange value with each other. Relationships are built. The first impression helps, but there are an endless chain of stories about terrible first meetings that, through some persistence and intention, turned into wonderful relationships. They were improved upon!

That’s why you can’t simply do nothing and then expect to make a good first impression and suddenly have everything all at once. While there are some customers that know exactly what they want right off the bat, it’s likely that you’ll have a lot of them (read: most) who you’ll need to connect with multiple times. You have to start the relationship, and then improve upon it: and you can’t improve on nothing.