The First Impression Factor, Part VIII

JetNetting with Heshie Segal

In Part VII of The First Impression Factor, you had the opportunity to assess your ability to make that all important positive first impression. How did you do? Have you recognized and implemented change in any area? If so, you will have surely seen some differences in “who you are being”. If not, and you are dubious about how to address specific challenges, you will, in the next part of this series, be given hints on making the most of each of the action items from the prior assessment. While it may take some practice, you will hone those skills until your actions become second nature.

In the next articles, we will focus on the part of the communication section dealing with the smile and eye contact. For a complete outline of all the communication skills, refer back to The First Impression Factor, Part VII. You will notice several of these categories being combined in future articles.

Before you even say a word, you already communicate with your body language...a smile, eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, and your posture. It’s all non-verbal, and to the surprise of some, it speaks louder than your words.

The Smile

The smile has its own universal language. It is the most powerful non-verbal tool we possess. It costs us nothing and it could cost us everything. It conveys a myriad of emotions without our uttering a word. It cheers the discouraged. It fosters good will in business. It makes us wealthy when we give or receive it and makes us impoverished when we withhold it or do not bestow it.

Smiling is a powerful cue that conveys warmth and friendliness. As a communication tool, it tells people you feel secure and have high self-esteem. If you smile frequently, you will be perceived as more likeable, warm, approachable, confident and non-threatening. True smiles are the result of something or someone pleasing you. They say, “I like it or I like you. Because smiles are infectious, they make people feel good and that tends to make them be more receptive to listening to you.

If the smile is inappropriate, continuous or if it is used simply to please someone else, it will certainly appear as just that . . insincere, you will not be taken seriously and will lose credibility. Avoid compulsive smiling. It is overkill and negative. Smirk and you take the risk of being perceived as sarcastic and negative.

True smiles are not usually very prolonged. In fact, the Long Smile might frequently be faked or forced. It can be distracting and invariably arouse a negative feeling...unless of course the situation is one that makes you genuinely happy.

How and when you smile has meaning:

Our smiles come in many sizes, shapes, widths, and with and without teeth showing, each used for a reason.

1. The Simple Smile shows no teeth. It is used in passing another person or simply when you think of something pleasant; like smiling to yourself. When it is forced, it tends to indicate insincerity.
2. The Upper Smile exposes the upper teeth. This smile is often used when greeting someone. Eye contact normally accompanies this type of smile.
3. With the Broad Smile, both upper and lower teeth are visible. This smile is an indication of genuine interplay of good humor, jest, and belly laughter. No eye contact needs to accompany this laugh.
4. Oblong Smiles, where the lips are drawn back fully, have no depth and are usually a forced indication of politeness.
5. The Lip-In Smile is similar to the upper smile. In this case, the lower lip is pulled in between the teeth. It sometimes signals a feeling of subordination.

Your smile may be so big, so genuine, so loud when you laugh, there may not even be a need to make eye contact. And still remember, you must return to the eye contact because it is here that the real connection begins.

In Part IX, we will focus on that connection...the eye contact that can establish the trust and deepens rapport.

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The First Impression Factor, Part VIII

The One Word That Will Destroy Your Networking Efforts

Mastering the Membership Maze with Glen Gould

One word? Can it be that of the 616,500 words in the Oxford English Dictionary there is one word that we’re using that is sabotaging our networking efforts? Indeed.

Networking is about communicating effectively how you and the people you touch can bring value and benefit to the person you are communicating with and the people they touch (and vice-versa). Those who communicate effectively win.

Yet communication is something that few of us do exceptionally well. What’s more, most of us are wingits (Whatever Is Next Gets Into The Script). We stand up or walk into an event and we wingit; whatever is next in our mind falls out of our mouth. Few of us spend time thinking about what we’re saying, why we’re say it, what others hear us say, and what that means to our bottom line.

Professionals don’t wingit. They have a script from which they are speaking. Sure they occasionally with speak off-script, however it is rare that the adlib to the script changes the context of the scene. Robin Williams is a master at improvisation. You may be too, but somehow I doubt that Williams adlibbed the lines in “Good Will Hunting” for which he won an Oscar. When it really counts professionals read, practice, try and retry; analyzing each detail of facial expression and gesture that results in a perfect performance. Anything less is left on the cutting room floor.

So what if anything does all this have to do with our “one word” offense? Plenty. Without carefully crafting a message that you know how, when and why to deliver, without carefully planning the purpose of communicating your message, without thoughtfully and strategically developing a message that will bring in the desired results you seek, you will undoubtedly utter this odious noun: Anybody.

O.K. it can be “someone, somebody, anyone” and occasionally “everyone”. How is it used? “Everyone is my target customer.” “Anyone who is looking for a house.” “Somebody who has good credit.” “Someone who uses supplements.” You get the idea.

When we make a new acquaintance or when we’re listening to an elevator pitch at a networking event, we’re engaged in a search for matches to the requests we hear. We hear that Mary is into quilting and we think of Aunt Jane. We hear that Bob is a golfer and we think of the new customer we just landed who loves golf. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we’re always trying to relate to the messages we are hearing.

When we hear the word (or variation thereof) “anybody”, we immediately lock up. The same thing happens when we try to process too much information on our computers: it’s the blue screen of death effect. We can’t possibly think of “anybody” because we’re thinking of “everybody”. It’s our job to focus attention on the specific person or persons we are looking for and the place where we might find them.

For example: I’m Bob with Widgets Unlimited. We make widgets for the widget industry. A great referral for me would be the people you play golf with on Saturday. A variation on this is to be specific when you know specifically whom you’d like to meet. Not long ago I urged the audience at one of our Leads To Business events to tell us exactly whom they’d like to meet. One attendee said she needed to meet Tyler Perry and as fate would have it, I had met someone who worked for Tyler Perry that week. If she hadn’t been specific, I wouldn’t have drawn the correlation.

Big groups are great places to obtain referrals. People want to help us. It’s our job to help them help us. When we determine exactly what we are looking for, craft and practice a message that attracts those referrals until we know it cold, and then update the message based on the results we get, we will get better results. What’s more, we’ll be seen as the professionals that we are in all the other facets of our work.

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The One Word That Will Destroy Your Networking Efforts