Entering your lead data into a spreadsheet or CRM so that you can use it to follow up effectively with people you have met is one of our more popular services.
The most cost effective way for this to be done (whether our clients do it themselves or we do it for them) is to scan the cards with a card scanner. Over the last couple of months we’ve been making note of what slows this process down – at times to the point of making no difference between manual entry versus scanning.
We know you want your card to be pretty and stand out – so do we! However, too unique renders it rather useless unless you are hoping that the people you connect with will love your card so much they will keep it in their wallet at all times – and I’m hear to tell as the person who handles your cards – they don’t.
Here are our top 5 tips to ensure your business card won’t get junked:
1. Two sided cards are great – but make sure all of your important details are together on one side. Split your information up and you risk your potential connection losing half of the data.
2. Do you really need 5+ phone numbers on your business card – what is your main number and if you have it your toll free number. That should be enough. More than three and you are forcing your connection to chose which ones are actually important (and sometimes it’s a third party like us having to make that decision)
3. Super glossy doesn’t work so well on a scanner and it also makes it difficult for your contact to make any memory prompts on your card – like why they want to connect with you.
4. Too much text. Your tag line, why you’re awesome, the awards you’ve won, this is all great content that you could use on the second side of your card (you know because you’ve put all your important company information together on the other side of your card).
5. I don’t care what anyone tells you – as an avid networker and someone who physically deals with hundreds of our client’s network gained business cards I am telling you unique sizes are a bad idea. First, smaller than average and risk slipping through the cracks, too big and they don’t fit in our wallets or business card holders and scanners don’t love them too much either. Besides, our eyes are trained to recognize a business cards based largely on size. Your itty bitty card may just register as a scrap in my purse and your great big one might be perfect for protecting my table from my coffee cup.
I am very aware that your designer may disagree with me and that’s fine. I just ask you to consider one question – what is the job of your business card. As a fellow business owner and as someone who works with a lot of other business owners I think I can safely say that most of us believe the job of our business card is to relay important contact information about us, create a memory trigger of how awesome we are and hopefully prompt contact. If all of your focus is on looking great or creating your memory trigger then your card is failing at the other two major parts of it’s job.
So, the moral of this post is before you go to print the next time you run out of cards take a look at your card and ask yourself how easily your potential clients will be able to pull your data from you card. Also – if you have a stack of cards that you’ve been meaning to connect with – give us a call – we’ll get the job done!