In life, presentation is everything. How you present yourself has a huge
impact on your relationships with others.

How you dress has perhaps the most fundamental impact. Someone once said
something that stuck with me: “How you dress indicates the respect you have
for other people.”

Think about how your clients will perceive you when you meet them in an
Afflicition tee shirt and True Religion jeans rather than business dress,
either business formal or business casual.

Exactly.

Of course, the image you’re trying to present goes beyond just what you
wear. While this is an endless subject I’d like to drill down to the dangers
of fronting affluence.

You don’t want to look like a skid; clients shouldn’t worry that you’re
taking their deposit money to pay for the gear on your last job, and you’re
dodging calls from the bank, but by the same token you don’t want to dress
and act like you’re doing too well.

PRO TIP: If, like one lady I know, you insist on parking your convertible
Ferrari in front of your store with a sign card bearing your store’s logo in
the windshield don’t get all butt-hurt and indignant when I start paying
hardball on price, negotiating a better deal. The car out front tells me
that clearly your prices have room to move.

My all-time favourite story about this is one that a friend who is a
high-end (and I mean HIGH-END) integrator in Vancouver BC. While on vacation
in Miami he was visiting an uncle who owns a jewlery shop. His uncle showed
him a Richard Mille Grand Complication: a wristwatch with a retail price of
$225,000.

Fast forward to a few months later, and one of my friend’s salespeople came
to him for help closing a client. The client was balking at the price tag of
an $80,000 AV system. “It just seems like too much.” The client told my
friend.
That’s when he noticed the client’s watch. A Richard Mille Grand
Complication.

“My goodness!” he faux-exclaimed to the client, “Is that a Richard Mille
Grand Complication?” The client, knowing where this was going, grudgingly
admitted that it was.

“Just think,” my friend continued, “For slightly more than a third the cost
of what you’re wearing on your wrist you can have an AV system that will
blow your hair back. Now, that doesn’t really seem like too much, does it?”

The client stopped haggling, pulled out his checkbook and paid up.