Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 14, 1993 TAG: 9303120024
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE BUSINESS OF SELLING YOUR BEST IMPRESSION
The image business has come a long way from color, clothes and cosmetics.In her "Power Packaging and Success Seminars," Roanoke consultant Jenny Taubman is teaching local companies that image is a business tool.
The image of image consultants is changing as well.
Nancy Chen of New York, vice president for marketing at the Association of Image Consultants International, said the profession has broadened from physical appearance and dressing into etiquette and behavior.
"That, too, is part of non-verbal communication," Chen said.
And many consultants, like Taubman, have extended further into the verbal skills of interpersonal communications and presentations, Chen added.
She said the association is working to upgrade the industry. Because it is an unregulated business, hair stylists and people who sell cosmetics and clothing often call themselves image consultants, she said.
Members of the association, according to Chen, are following the trend to a wider range of image enhancing services.
The association has 18 members in Virginia, including Taubman. There are two in Tidewater, one each in Charlottesville and Midlothian and the rest in the Washington suburbs.
Taubman said that in the 1970s and 1980s the emphasis was on "the me generation." People stressed how they looked and felt.
The 1990s, she added, is the decade of communication in "tele- ways," as in television and telemarketing.
At a seminar given at the Roanoke offices of J.C. Bradford & Co., Taubman showed pairs of pictures of the same person, in the same clothes, approaching a customer.
Only one pose, the seminar participants agreed, suggested competence and authority - the kind of person they would buy securities from.
Taubman said studies show that appearance and actions account for 55 percent of a first impression. A person's voice accounts for another 38 percent.
Only 7 percent of that first impression depends on what's actually said, she said.
"If I don't put it across correctly, you forget it," Taubman said of the message. "If I do well, you might go home knowing nothing. But you'd have listened to me."
Taubman contends "The correct non-verbal image is what sells."
It's possible to create a powerful image that gives a person an edge in the business world, a means to "get a foot in the door."
So her seminars concentrate on body language as well as appearance: How you stand, how you sit on a chair or at a table? Other important elements are what you do with your hands, eye contact and how close you stand to another person.
And then there's business etiquette. How do you shake hands? How do you introduce people to each other? What do you do if you forget the person's name?
Taubman founded her consulting company, Personal Image, in Roanoke in 1981, to help individuals. She works with both men and women, including bankers and local politicians.
A former model and fashion designer, Taubman was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and educated in London, Edinburgh and Tel Aviv. She is fluent in six languages and served as a sergeant in the Israeli army.
She got into seminars early. Her first was in 1982 for the Blue Ridge Funeral Directors Association, and she once conducted a lunchtime series at Heironimus for downtown workers.
Only in the last year or so, however, has she concentrated on companies, helping their workers use image as a business tool.
Does it help?
"Very much so," said Peter Milward, manager of J.C. Bradford's Roanoke office. "There were no negative comments" from the participants. "Everyone was very positive."
The seminar was for the securities company's support staff, he said, and several of them said "one or two brokers could benefit."
Pearl Gearhart, vice president for administration at Shenandoah Life, said a seminar there "went over very well. It gave them some good ideas.
"It was kind of a fun thing" mixed in with some other kinds of training, Gearhart said.
Vickie Havens, a spokeswoman for Icon Inc. in Moneta, said all of the employees there went through the seminar.
She said Icon employees were "real pleased with it. She gave us a lot of helpful tips."
Taubman tells of clients who transformed themselves into business people with an image of authority and competence. "This is where I get my satisfaction," she said.