Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
First Impressions Part 5: Physical Education
Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.
So it’s come to this--your first in-person meeting with a prospect. Just like studying for your finals in chemistry, you need to prep yourself so that your confidence is high, your smile is bright, and your interpersonal skills are sharp. All this is necessary to create the chemistry needed for a great personal impression that will in turn become a satisfying business deal.
In the last installment of the First Impressions series, we described the necessity of providing sales and marketing materials that “speak” to readers on a variety of levels on a variety of topics. In this segment, we discuss the all-important close encounter of the business kind--the time when actual contact between actual people occurs and you and your prospects actually come face to face for the first time.
Act One
What got your virtual foot in the proverbial door? What ploy or series of ploys finally worked to get the prospect to want to meet you?
Did you use some super number-crunching demographic data to entice them? Was there some kind of industry moll involved that knew the prospect needed your services? Did word of mouth help bring them to you? Some kind of presentation, seminar, website, white paper, etc., that drew them in?
If you don’t know, you should. In the course of phone exchanges, e-mail and old-fashioned correspondence, before …
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