A personal poor first impression incident happened early on in my career as an entry level e-business banking officer. Part of my job scope at the time, included going to client locations to pitch our electronic banking applications to a group of often high ranking officials. It was a pretty standard routine, I would start off by delivering a power point presentation to highlight the product features, follow it with a Q&A session after which I would launch the application and proceed with a live demo to emphasize how user friendly the products were.
I delivered these presentations so often that it got to a point when I could do my presentations without having to look at the slides and could predict the questions that would be asked and answer them preemptively. I had also learnt from doing so many sales pitches that almost every audience had a 'problem person' and could spot them almost immediately I stepped into the meeting room. A 'problem person' in this instance refers to that one person that pretends to have more important things to do than being bogged with 'your' sales pitch, they usually spend most of the meeting fiddling with their phone/tab and would only spring into action during the time for questions to ask questions with the sole purpose of throwing you off.
Over the course of doing these pitches, I had learned that to manage the 'problem person', I needed to pay them more attention than necessary and answer their questions as politely as possible no matter how mundane or meaningless the questions were. The trick was to identify them for what they were (distractions), navigate their obstacle courses as effortlessly as possible, stay on focus and never lose my cool or let them get on my nerves.
On one occasion, I was tasked with making a pitch for an important prospect of the bank and before heading to the meeting my manager informed me of how big the prospects account was and the decision as to whether they would start banking with us rested on the product I was going to talk to them about. So I was already a bag of nerves heading into the clients office and it didn't help matters when I spotted the problem person the moment he walked in as I was setting up. He sized me up and said to my hearing that he would have preferred someone 'more senior' than I was to handle the presentation.
After doing what I believed was an impeccable presentation and fielding all his questions, it was time for a live demo and from that moment, everything seemed to go south. I couldn't gain access to the application, and after several failed attempts, I excused myself from the meeting to put a call through to our support team, who were able to resolve the issue after what seemed like the longest 5 minutes of my life. I returned to the meeting flustered, apologized for the glitch and proceeded with the demo all the while trying my best to ignore the problem guy smirking behind me as I struggled to regain my composure. After logging into the application, I attempted to simulate a payment process but got logged out, I tried to downplay the glitch by re-signing in and demonstrating another product feature but got signed out again. At that point I was forced to admit to the group that there was a system malfunction which I would have to log in with our developers and rescheduled the demo. Thankfully, they were quite sympathetic to my plight and agreed to have the demo at a later date.
As I was packing up my equipment, problem guy walked up to me with a huge grin on his face scoffed and said "You know you don't get a second chance to make a first impression right?"
It took everything within me not to snap at him. I just smiled and continued with my bags, thanked the room for their time and walked away. I would save the frustration brought on by the humiliating experience for the support team back at the office.
In the course of your career, it is important to create good first impressions but what happens if you blow your chance at making a good first impression? You do not have to bury your head in shame and give in to the false notion that by missing that one chance of putting up a good showing it is over for you. You can recoup by doing the following;
Do not apologize if the gaffe was no fault of yours as apologizing is an admittance of wrong doing on your part. You should instead work towards offering a plausible explanation for why there was a gaffe. But if you must apologize, be graceful about it, make your apology short and straight to the point, try not to grovel or avoid eye contact, crack a smile if you can manage one.
It's okay ask for a second chance, there's no harm in asking for 5 minutes to gather your thoughts and sort out whatever it is that is unnerving you. You can take a quick break to the restroom, pop , take several deep breaths, some mints in your mouth, look yourself in the mirror and give yourself a pep-talk. If like me your failure to launch was caused by something outside of your control, place a call to whoever is responsible and find out if it can be rectified immediately or if you need more time.
Walk out with your shoulders square and with your head held high; no matter how badly you think your performance was, when you leave the room/meeting/interview leave with your dignity in tact. This is because the more confidence you convey, the more other people will react to you.
Make a killer second impression: If you were lucky to get a second chance, make the most of the opportunity by preparing for it with the precision of an Olympian training towards winning a gold medal. Ensure that you dot your i's and cross your t's and to dwell on your past poor showing, even if it is brought up by your audience, politely steer the conversation away and leave it were it belongs which is in the past.
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