First impressions count

Many performance predictors reside in the various first impressions created by an organisation.

Try taking off your ‘owner’ hat for a moment, and try on a ‘client’ one. Look at your business as if you were going to do business as a customer, and were meeting for the first time. What would your first impression be?

Are your premises clean and tidy? Would you be fizzing with enthusiasm and faith in your new financial planner if their office space looked like a garage, with dead cockroaches slowly piling up behind the door?

Are you clean and tidy? What if your personal trainer rocked up to your house looking like the rats had just kicked him out of the gutter and with eyes more bloodshot than a Tequila worm?

How do they pay you? Do you offer a choice of EFT, cheque or cash? Would you pause before signing if the invoice from a courier company was a badly-spelt and barely legible scribble on the back of an envelope?

These may be extremes, and you may be snorting in derision at how far from your organisation these examples are, but hold on and think a bit more. Are you presenting your organisation at its best? Just how far from the examples are you really?

Ensure the window into the future of your organisation provides a snapshot of reality by using performance predictors to make a positive first impression on prospective customers.