Malloy said to "Dress for Success"

In the late '70s, John Malloy wrote an excellent book called Dress for Success. Many of the suggestions in the book still apply to certain industries. However, dressing for success has changed and I'm not sure for the better. Some sales people take the whole casual business dress to the extreme; wearing tennis shoes, no socks, shirts that aren't clean, skirts that are too short etc.

I had an opportunity to make some joint calls with a regional manager for one of the largest corporations in the world and they had a fairly strict dress code; suits and solid shirts with ties.
Unfortunately, we were going to make calls to and in coal mines. I advised that in this particular case, the mining companies wanted to see someone who could get dirty and jeans, older shirt, boots and no tie were recommended. He didn't even flinch - "can't do it".

We traveled to 3 mines and in each case we weren't allowed out of the office of the safety engineer even though there was equipment to inspect. I was dressed appropriately but that didn't help and had to come back the next week to do the work.

Another time a national VP of sales was with me, in the sunny south during the middle of July. We both had coats and ties and were on our way to the last call of the day. The VP asked if we could lose the coats and I advised that this next call was with a good friend and would be no problem. Wrong call !! We were chewed out for being unprofessional. I found out later that my friend made examples of us because he had just chewed out one of his guys for not dressing well and wanted to be sure the message go through.

Regardless of your industry, dress well and cleanly. No little stains (that just beg to be stared at), no little rips etc. How you look says a lot about you, your attention to detail or sloppiness. Remember, all the professional literature says that you are judged by people within the first 2 - 3 seconds of being seen.