A study at Harvard Medical School found that people assess our competence and trustworthiness within the first quarter of a second of looking at us! I don't say this to be insensitive, but rather to remind us that everything we do speaks - everything verbal and nonverbal about our person is a part of our sales presentation whether we like it or not.

Fredrik Eklund is the famous Bravo TV realty star of Million Dollar Listing New York and author of The Sell – The Secrets of Selling Anything to Anyone. Eklund is not just famous for being famous on a television show, but whose mega successful sales strategy has garnered a reputation for being New York's #1 real estate broker and having secured over $2 billion in closed residential sales.

When reading The Sell over this past weekend, I found it fascinating how much emphasis Eklund puts on the need for sales professionals to stay healthy and dress well – google his name and we can see just how seriously he lives out that mentality. If we refer back to the Harvard study for just how quickly a person assesses our competence and trustworthiness however, this heavy emphasis on our external presentation makes total sense. In Eklund's words, "think of yourself as a present: it doesn't matter what's inside a gift if it isn't wrapped well, because the outside is what makes you interested. So dress well, avoid wearing black and gray, find your own style and make sure your hair looks nice. When you feel good about your appearance, you'll project more confidence."

Dr. Vivian Zayas at Cornell University was once quoted as saying "individuals make impressions and judgements about people very quickly, very easily, and with very minimal information. And once those judgements are made they tend to be hard to undo. They're quite sticky."

Dressing well does not necessarily mean dressing expensive, but dressing in a manner that appropriately reflects the level of professionalism we bring to our work. Let's for a moment walk in our prospective clients shoes: how would we prefer the individual who will be guiding us through the biggest financial decision of our lives to carry themselves? Would we be more keen to trust the sales professional with well fitting clothing and manicured hair to handle our transaction? Or one that appears to have just rolled out of bed and put together the closest particles of clothing they could find to call an outfit? Again, the cost of the outfit isn't what matters, but how we care for it and apply it to our presentation does. The sales professional that buys well fitted clothing, gets up early enough to spend the necessary time caring for their hair, makeup and eating a healthy breakfast, echoes volumes to our clients for how we care about both ourselves and our business.

In the words of renowned costume designer Edith Head, "You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it."     

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The views of this blog, "Your Morning Shot" podcast, and on this site in general are solely those of the authors, Matt Weaver (NMLS-175651) and Zack Lewis, and do not express the views or opinions of Finance of America Mortgage.