It just doesn’t look right.

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink argues that it takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions and explains this as thin slicing. Referred to as the ‘adaptive unconscious’, these mental and physical ‘touch points’ take mere nanoseconds to associate the impression of you in the minds of the receiver.

Clients have the same reaction.

What you should know is that whether or not it ‘looks right’ is subconsciously regulated to the viewers higher thinking zones, almost instantly, and this impression can last a long time. This is a good thing or bad thing, depending on how you measured up.

A good example of just how fast an impression is activated is to think about the last time you bought a book: you quickly scan the shelf of the New York Times Best Sellers and unconsciously make a mental decision on the book cover, title or bi-line, even picking it up as if trying to evoke an impression from it… because we all react the same way.

Clients sense a physical presence to digital communications.

It’s no different when your client makes the same unconscious and rapid impression of your email, even imagining and sensing a physical presence to it. There’s nothing to touch or feel yet impressions are won or lost in seconds.

It’s not just the look but the content and layout that drive the impression centers. Like the statue that was faked with incredible detail and fooled all the experts, it’s the whole package that counted.  Ask a recruiter what their impression is of a hot shot’s resume with a typo: it’s exiled to the junk basket. Unfortunately clients won’t be so communicative when it comes to expressing their impressions to you.  These are all impressions that were sensed long before your final proposal and will either bless or haunt you.

Learn from the Automotive Marketers.

These boys know how to play upon the value of the ‘right look’.  The color, look, smell and feel are huge touch points and formed the buyer’s ‘impression’ long before you wander into the showroom.  In a recent visit to a car dealership I found out that new sales recruits don’t get business cards until they last at least 3 weeks. So the dealer won’t make an investment in a cheap card (even less investment in sales people apparently) yet they presume the buyer will make a huge investment with that same person. No matter how good the marketing was to get me to that dealer, my ‘unconscious’ brain went into hyper drive. It started with a ‘weird feeling’ and then ‘no card’ (or brochure for that matter) was a great excuse to get out of there.

It’s all about the impression.

DeBeers is simply the best at creating an impression. Even in the face of indistinguishable replica diamonds at a fraction of the price, their ‘impression’ is undeniable. They’ve also crafted our impression on the fakes… interesting how they did that.

Creating a good, lasting impression is priceless.

My first business venture was a high line shoe store. A small but very cool item was a business card of genuine leather. It was costly but so was getting a customer in the door. Without fail, the response was ‘wow, what a great card’.  It always left a good impression. For that, the cost of the card was minimal.

The lesson I learned (and often forgot) was creating a good, lasting impression is priceless. I recently ordered up some business cards online. The quality was ok but they just didn’t look right. I kept them thinking it didn’t matter, right until I handed it to the CEO of a prospective client. His impression was definitely not a wow one. I would have paid anything to change his impression at that moment.

MosaicCRM Expert Tips

It is practically impossible to get a second chance at making and keeping a good impression with customers. So we have guided a number of clients to view their CRM program as a tool that works absolute wonders with customer loyalty ‘impressions’:

• Focus reams of client data: Customers habits change and so keep your CRM geared to refining their profile to their specific likes/needs. MosaicCRM offers custom fields on account, contact, sales and activity components making it easy to define and refine your data.
• Apply ‘Buying Cycle’ information: Mosaic CRM sales and activity monitors improves how you manage customer purchasing behavior. Nobody wants to be pestered with uncoordinated calls, email and marketing pieces.
• Analyze your audience: sort through the data to determine the best customer experiences, and then copy them.
• Build confidence and excellent brand experience: get everyone who touches the client involved in CRM with one enterprise-wide single picture of the customer.
• Build in sales processes and work flows: keep personnel on track with what the customer needs, how they like to be contacted then follow that script with built in tools like Mosaic’s Marvel that schedules the precise types and content of customer touch points.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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