'Qualify' Your Customers on Personality as Well as Finances

The importance of finding qualified customers goes beyond assessing their financial means. Another important aspect of selling is "qualifying" their personality type and buying approach against the capabilities, techniques and appearance of your sales staff.

"Within the first 60 seconds, a person will decide if they want to do business with you - 55% will be based on how you look, 38% on your body language and voice intonation, and only 7% will be on what you say," says Anne Warfield, founder of Impression Management Professionals in Edina, Minn., and author of Outcome Thinking: Getting Results Without the Boxing Gloves. "And this impression becomes the base for how they view your company's compassion, skill and expertise."

Given this idea, it's important that sales staff be trained to encounter and interact with numerous personality types - what Warfield calls "impression management."

Impression Management Professionals offers books, articles and coaching and training seminars for learning more about the twofold art of managing customer perceptions and your bottom line. For more information, visit www.impressionmanagement.com.