Up your sales by dressing down

A subject few people in the Nordics talk about is how we dress for different business occasions. I’ve always dressed very casually in jeans, sneakers and T-shirts. On weekends I can wear training pants from morning to late night. Yep, that’s me. Still, I think a lot about how to dress for business meetings.

Dress to connect

Sometimes, I look up people I have booked meetings with on Facebook or LinkedIn in hope of seeing which style they prefer. If they are VERY formally dressed, I might dress up somewhat since I don’t want them to believe I walked into the wrong office. When a person’s profile photos show a quite relaxed style of clothing, then I tend to dress down. You can definitely connect with a person through such a basic thing as clothing, at least initially.

Fitting in

When you are new at a job, you often want to fit in. At the age of 23 I got hired as an account manager by a huge American Fortune 500 company. I quickly realised that I couldn’t dress the way I was used to. There was a DRESS CODE! So I suited up American style: a slightly oversized blazer, blue shirt, jeans and beige suede shoes. I thought that I had to look like this to impress my customers. Over time my casual instincts slowly broke down the dresscode, bit by bit. And guess what? The business meetings went just as well as before. No, I didn’t go into meeting in Crocs and sweat pants, but at least more dressed down than before. Since I was producing top sales results, ”my style” got acceptable and it even became my signature look. I got promoted three times without forcing the correct style upon myself.

Standing out

As the years went by, I applied for my dream job at the Swedish Ferrari general importer. Oh boy! I knew my comfy style was doomed as soon as I entered the showroom for my first interview. I dressed more suited up than I’ve ever been and went through five interviews over a total of ten hours. I got the job!

My new colleagues looked like wandering Hugo Boss commercials (and smelled like them too). Being comfy at this office seemed like a far fetched vision. For a while, it was a part time job getting well dressed with all the right things suited together for that sharp ”ace look”.

Eventually, my sales results stood out in a good way and I got accepted as a good salesman. Since I didn’t have to prove myself further when it came to my ability to sell, I slowly started to adapt my casual style again. During this time, my sales hit the roof. For two years I sold more cars than everyone else on my team and my boss didn’t once say anything regarding my casual style.

Feeling comfortable

Throughout the years, many of my costumers have told me that they felt comfortable with me. They like that I dress like a normal dude that they can connect with. I actually believe that I sold more cars since I felt comfortable in myself.

Personal preferences in clothing is becoming more acceptable in the business world, so I recommend that you try it out! Customers tend to feel comfortable around you when you are comfortable in yourself.

Kenneth Falk is a co-founder of Our Green Car, which is one of the startups in batch 4 of the E.ON :agile Nordic accelerator. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook to learn more!