Dress For Success
By Jayme Broudy, Contractor’s Business School
Dear Jayme:
Sometimes my employees show up for work looking pretty ragged. They all do good work, but their appearance concerns me. Is this worth worrying about?
-Chuck
Dear Chuck:
Picture this: you’re on a plane waiting to leave and the pilot walks on wearing jeans, a Grateful Dead T-shirt, unshaven, and had spikey hair. What’d be your level of confidence in him vs. the pilot in the crisp dark blue uniform, clean shave, and short haircut? T-shirt guy may be a great pilot, but wouldn’t it creep you out and make you shy away from that airline next time?
Same with you and your employees: you may all be top-flight technical experts and great people, but your market also wants to see someone that makes them feel confident and assured. Fair? Maybe not. True? Absolutely.
The first rule of appearance is not to offend or look weird to anyone. Be vanilla. Who’s an example of someone who doesn’t offend anybody and always gives professional impression? The UPS guy. Clean shaven, unremarkable haircut, clean and crisp uniform, no visible tattoos or piercings. If you’re in doubt about how to look, think about him.
Some specific suggestions:
• Top of my list: close shaves. I don’t care if it’s fashion-acceptable to have a two day growth of beard. Stubble will annoy some people, but a clean shave will offend no one.
• Haircuts/styles: Short, conservative. Purple faux-hawks on their own time.
• Facial hair: none. No goatees, no beards, no Elvis sideburns.
• Clothes: Everybody wears the same outfit. Uniform services are sometimes best, or you can just provide each employee with three decent-grade polo shirts with your name and logo on them. Other options here also, just make it clean and consistent.
• Grooming: Doesn’t everybody just know what good grooming means? As if. It means everything clean when you show up at the job. Hot weather and dirty jobs are inevitable, but remember the impression you’re making when the customer opens the door or sees you at lunch.
• Tattoos and piercings: None visible. This is a common requirement of employment. Cover-ups are available.
Does appearance matter even for small contractors? Yes, at least as much as for the bigger guys, because you’re already fighting the “two guys in a pickup truck, here today gone tomorrow” image, and anything you can do to demonstrate that you’re a serious businessperson improves your standing in people’s minds.
What you think is acceptable appearance doesn’t count here. All that matters is what your market finds attractive (or at least inoffensive). Sharp appearance doesn’t have to be big deal or cost much, but it can pay big rewards. If your competition is already doing it, you’d better catch up. If they’re not, it’s an opportunity for you to jump ahead of them.
Best,
Jayme
Contractor’s Business School® is a coaching, training and consulting firm specializing in helping contractors produce more profit in less time. Calling on experience dating back to 1993, the company has worked with hundreds of contractors in many specialty areas to build successful stand-alone businesses. Visit www.contractorsbusinessschool.com, or call (800) 527-7545 to get the FREE CD "10 Key Strategies to Build a Business that Works."
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