It’s not a secret that our business success highly depends on our communication skills.
Paradoxically, many companies forgot to put those skills on the top of training list. How many project didn’t start because of our account manager / sales representative communication impotence? Probably we won’t ever now (or statistics are so dramatic, that’s better not to know them ). What’s the most important, and how the communication process goes? What we should pay biggest attention to? Who is more communicative – women or men, what are differences between their skills ?
Below, I will try to shed some light on a burning question of communication between company and it’s client, by giving some practical tips and advices.

7 seconds

We sit in a restaurant, drinking nice coffee, waiting for an appointment with client. Finally, we see him coming through restaurant’s doors. We establish an eye contact, and it’s about to shake hands.
This is a time-twinkle, quick and unnoticed. What can happen during this 7 sec time period? You may say “not much”. Researchers from New York University proved that people make eleven decisions about us in the first seven seconds of contact, they estimate our:

1)education level,
2)economic level,
3)perceived creditability and believability,
4)trustworthiness,
5)level of sophistication,
6)sexual identification,
7)level of success,
8)political background,
9)religious background,
10)ethnic background and
11)social and professional desirability.

Shocked? Fortunately or unfortunately, perception is everything! First impression is an instinct, fully natural reaction, which can’t be switched off. From verbal and non-verbal signs we get picture strongly colored with emotions which remains and affect on our behaviour in the future.
If we came off badly, nothing is lost – the way we communicate also contributes to the first impression. Let’s make communication happen, and make first (good) impression long lasting one.
The first impression should be consistent with a further course of our conversation.Consistency of the two phases provides itself-confidence. You want the first seven seconds of contact to be positive. Those seven seconds may change the rest of your life, even business one.

In second part you will find few usefull hints about conducting succesfull conversations with client.