eTips frequently emphasises the importance of first impressions. That’s because a first impression carries disproportionate weight and often unduly influences attitudes and decisions.
In making decisions about business development, sales promotion, and profile raising, it’s vital to take account of your mind’s propensity to overemphasise the first information it receives.
Initial impressions can anchor your subsequent thoughts about an opportunity, document, headline statistic, client, or an area of work - sometimes insidiously.
Take the example of projecting revenue with a client. The customary starting point is revenue track record. A good place to start, for sure, but beware being anchored by the old data. Better forecasting will flow from looking hard at factors likely to influence future events, rather than history.
Avoiding the influence of first thoughts and anchors isn’t the way. Rather, by understanding that early impressions and history are likely to be unduly influential, and then compensating, you’ll avoid potential negatives.
Practical techniques include:
- Reflect on the issue or problem before seeking other input.
- Ask a colleague or adviser to play devil’s advocate and test your assumptions.
- Consciously take a series of different perspectives on a problem or opportunity - try alternate starting propositions.
- Seek information and input from disparate sources.
- Enlist advice on a particular opportunity or challenge and listen extra hard, probing out fully, before disclosing and discussing your ideas.
- Constantly question your assumptions throughout a project.
Because first thoughts can act as an anchor, impeding us by restricting the range of options which we develop and assessments we make, a savvy business developer will constantly search “outside the square” and listen intently for surprising [and even unwelcome] signals.
Don’t be encumbered by undue influence from your first impression.
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