It’s been said that a confused prospect never buys. Know yourself, know your stuff, know your audience, and know what success looks like, and you too can be a successful communicator.

Nosce te ipsum—Know Thyself

In the world of effective sales and communication it boils down to one simple truth: People buy you before they buy your product or service.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve heard the aphorism, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Usually this was said in the context of making sure I didn’t screw up some big performance or meeting. It’s been applied to everything from code of conduct to dress to presentations and proposals to tone of voice and eating style.

One of the best and hardest experiences of my life was selling books door to door for two summers for the Southwestern Company while in college. During an intense week of Sales School, in which hundreds of college students from around the country are taught how to sell, one of the fundamental ideas driven home is that people buy you first and whatever you have to sell eventually, maybe. For a student trying to pay for college selling door to door, it’s an easy concept to adopt because you know beyond a doubt that you aren’t that good at selling anything and, if you have any hope of surviving the summer, people had better think you’re a decent person.

But there’s more to it than just being decent. People tend to make decisions at a gut level, emotionally, very quickly and decide whether you’re worth their time or not. When you’re selling door to door, your prospects check you out before they open the door. If they determine you’re not a threat, you might get a chance at pitching your goods. It’s what happens in speed dating: in just a few minutes we believe we can determine whether the person sitting across from us is worth another cup of coffee. Scientists call these kinds of snap judgments rapid cognition.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, addressed the idea of rapid cognition, where decisions are made in one to two seconds and at a gut level before your rational mind has a chance to catch up. I liken it to the average couch potato racing Olympic world record holder Usain Bolt in a 100-meter race. Bolt would sprint down the track, cross the finish line, change his shoes and grab a drink before Mr. Potato stumbled to some sort of ending.

Science tells us over and over that most of us feel a long time before we understand. In communication, that feeling is hugely important because you must know that the people you’re communicating with feel a connection with you—or don’t—in only seconds. So your well-prepared message, your 200-slide PowerPoint deck, your incredibly detailed logical, rational discourse on your topic du jour doesn’t stand a chance if your audience is turned off by you in the first few seconds and certainly first few minutes of your engagement.

This means you need to know you very well; your strengths, your weaknesses, your presentation style, when you tend to oversell or shut down, what you evade and your natural biases. Self-awareness helps you avoid some obvious social landmines so you don’t stumble in your first impression.

How you dress and speak are somewhat obvious elements as well. If you overdress for a casual discussion, or wear shorts to an executive presentation, you communicate that you don’t know your audience. Since we tend to prefer people who are like us, your social mismatch can close down the pitch before you get started. And your audience may never tell you why you missed.

If you haven’t already, it’s worth your time and money to look into some type of personality assessment tool, like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or DiSC. These tools can help you understand how you're wired and how the rest of the world may see you.

Know Your Stuff

Clarity starts with company purpose then cascades down to what products the company makes or services it offers.

I’m always amazed by how many people show up to presentations underprepared to talk about their own products or company. It’s a fundamental element of sales and good communication—you must know what you’re talking about. So get and be prepared.

You can’t sell what you don’t know. Why does your company exist? Why should anyone care that you are here and why would they care if you went away? According to the Meaningful Brands Index released annually by Havas Media, 73% of all brands could disappear and consumers wouldn’t care. The study covers brand authenticity, brand stories and brands contributing to the overall well-being of society.

I work with a range of clients every year to clarify and define their authentic story. We’ve found that companies without some fundamental purpose beyond making money have a hard time rallying the troops within the organization, and confuse their customers as well.

You might ask, “What does company purpose have to do with good communication?” The answer is simple: when you don’t first understand your organizational purpose, you run the risk of chasing after any shiny object. When that happens, two people from the same organization may have a difficult time telling the same story about their company, or the products and solutions that company offers.

Become an expert in your own company, its products and services, its history and legacy stories. If you're selling a service, you owe it to yourself and to your audience to know exactly what you can and can’t do, how your product is different and better than the competition, and how to solve the challenges your audiences face. Once you have the details down, you will be able to tailor your communication to suit your audiences. Not everyone is going to be excited about the same things, so you must be able to adjust. But you can’t adjust if you don’t have the fundamental knowledge to draw from in your conversation.

Know Your Audience

People desire information that addresses what they need, so you stand a better chance of making a true connection if you start with what’s most important to them.

We humans are a selfish lot. We think about ourselves first and often. Think you’re different? Find a group picture with you in it. Who do you look for first? That’s right, you. Most people do. Then we find the people we like in the photo, then the people we don’t like (just in case they look bad in the photo) and finally, if there’s time, the other people who just happened to be sharing our space at the moment the photo was taken. It’s natural, it’s human, and it’s the way your audience thinks every time you try to communicate. You have to know they are more interested in themselves than they are in you. So it makes sense to understand what you’re up against.

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey identified one habit as “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Making it a habit is exactly the point. In sales and communication you have to overcome your own desire to talk about yourself and whatever you have on your mind. Your audience is looking for information based on what they need. Seek first to understand them, then move on to help them understand how you and your product or service might solve a problem.

Just as personality tests help you figure out your communication style, they can also offer some barometer to measure your audience. Some people like big stories, some just want the facts. Some want to know you’ll always be there and cover all the details along the way. The faster you can read your audience the better chance you have of effectively communicating and closing a sale.

Know What Success Look Like

Start with the end in mind, and make sure both parties share in the spoils.

Stephen Covey also said to “think win-win”. In its base form that’s all there is to it. You need to have some idea of what an ideal outcome is—and that outcome should always include some form of shared value. Unbalanced outcomes aren’t sustainable for the simple reason that we humans like things to work in our favor. Bend the odds too far in one direction and the other party is eventually going to opt out of the deal. This is true in relationships, marriages, business deals and trips to the casino.

When you begin your conversations with the idea that the outcome will be good for both parties, you are more likely to look for positive compromise and stay open to creative solutions to the challenges on the table. Since both you and your audience ultimately want to win, it only makes sense to build your conversation from that angle and work to help both sides succeed.

Effective communication doesn’t have to be tricky or difficult. It’s one of the reason I use the tagline “logical branding.” When you apply these four principles—know yourself, know your stuff, know your audience and know what success looks like— conversations, sales calls, ads, social media posts and more just seem to end well on a more regular basis.