I have a meeting with a potential client this morning, so I am wearing my newest and sharpest-looking suit. I'm a big fan of the business suit. It's one of the few outfits that requires no imagination to put together and is guaranteed to ensure that the wearer looks like a serious, sensible, trustworthy businessman.

 

I have, of course, wondered many times whether wearing a business suit is really a good idea in a city that half the year has an average temperature of at least 28 degrees Celsius and an average humidity of more than 75 per cent. The daily challenge of getting from my air-conditioned apartment to my air-conditioned office without sweating right through my clothes stretches my patience at times.

 

But, at the end of the day, I look good in a suit. And that's nothing to do with me; everyone looks good in a suit. And looking good, looking like a well-tailored, sharp investment banker makes a difference. Like it or not, what you wear really does say something about you.

I'm hoping that this works when I meet Joel, who is the chief executive officer of a growing alternative energy company, and I'm hoping to add him and his company as a client. As I do with most new clients, I have had my secretary prepare some hefty power-point presentations for the meeting. They basically tell the story of what a great bank we are, what a fantastic track record we have and why we are really the only choice for their business. Like me, the presentation material is nicely packaged, so even if the contents are relatively uninteresting, everything looks very professional.

Joel arrives about 10 minutes late, as clients often do, and I walk up to reception to meet him. We shake hands and I lead him into one of the conference rooms with the great view.

As I said, I've taken great pains to wear what I think will project a professional image. Joel has taken a somewhat different approach. He's wearing white sneakers, blue jeans and a white polo shirt with a big clothing company's trademark on the front. His polo shirt is tucked into his jeans and the collar is turned up around his neck. No one accidentally leaves the house with the collar on their polo shirt standing up. It's a very conscious decision to wear your shirt this way. And only a certain kind of person would do it. The upturned collar says to the world: "I think I'm pretty cool and I want people to know."

The only person in history who actually was cool enough to pull this off was Arthur Fonzarelli, otherwise known as The Fonze. Anyone else who goes for the upturned collar, particularly in a business meeting, is simply trying too hard.

I go through the motions of explaining my presentation, but I find myself doubting that Joel is really someone I want as a client.

The meeting ends and Joel heads off, no doubt to see another bank. Before he goes, however, he asks me if I could e-mail over a fee proposal. He wants to know how much we would charge him if he were to become a client.

Normally I would think very hard about the terms of a fee proposal. How much can the client afford? What are my competitors going to quote? That sort of thing. But my proposal for Joel, I don't give it much thought. And on the fee, I ask for double what I would normally propose.

I don't hear back from him for a couple of days and so assume that he has hired some other bank. I begin to wonder if perhaps I was wrong to make a decision about him based on what he was wearing. I could surely have looked past the fact that he dresses like someone out of an 1980s teen television show. Should I perhaps have given him the benefit of the doubt and tried a bit harder to win his business?

A week later I find out the answer. He calls to tell me that he is happy with my proposal and wants to hire the bank. I thank him warmly and tell him that we'll be glad to get to work.

Thanks to his outfit and my gut reaction to it, we're going to make double what we would normally make from a client like this. Still, got to forget about that now and make sure we deliver.

The first thing he says he wants to do, to get the ball rolling, is meet the team. I suggest a conference call: it's probably not such a good idea for the guys who'll be doing Joel's work to actually see what he looks like.