Last updated on April 13th, 2015 at 02:28 pm

As a small business owner what is the first impression that you give prospective clients?  Is it that you are capable of “delivering the goods”, be that a service or an actual product, is it that you can be trusted or is it something completely different?

There is an old saying that first impressions count, this is more true than many people realise as is illustrated by a blog post that I was reading earlier today.  This post was written by someone that is in the process of starting up in business as a consultant and is one in a series of their progress along this path.  Back in October last year they posted about finding an accountant and a bank.

Their story is that they wanted to find a local accountant so Googled for accountants in their local area that specialised in small businesses and arranged an appointment with one that was within walking distance of their home.  When they got to the address at 10:30am on a Friday they were greeted by a man in blue pyjamas who had got the day wrong and thought it was a Saturday.  You can read the rest of the story here but you can imagine the result.  Yep, that was one accountant who although given a second chance didn’t get the business as the first impression was the wrong one.

There are many ways to make the wrong first impression, these can include :-

•  not being prepared for a meeting (like the story above)
• being untidy or not smelling nice (we have written about smelling good at work in a previous blog post)
• not responding to emails or telephone calls that ask for information
• having tatty, crumpled business cards
• having poor grammar and spelling on your advertising and website

A good example of the latter is a site that I was looking at recently that asked you to sign up to “recieve” (sic) their latest news letter – other examples that particularly peeve me are where people get “there” and “their”, “your” and “you’re” and “where” and “were” mixed up.

I am sure that you can think of other ways to make a poor impression but looking at the list above all of the ways that I have identified can be overcome with just a little work, make sure that you have a diary (either paper or online) that reminds you of meetings; look after your appearance; reply to people as soon as  you can if they are asking for more information; keep business stationery tidy and ask someone to proof-read your advertising, websites and any letters that you might write (or at the very least use the spell checkers and grammar checkers in your word processor and email client if they are available).

By giving a good first impression it leaves the way open to make an even better impression the second time around, thus increasing the chance of turning that first meeting into a sale for your business.