How to manage business cards to save time and boost client development?

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Evelaw Post on Business Cards.jpg

You just returned from a major conference, amazing professional cocktail series, or other excellent networking event. As you empty out your pockets, you are pleasantly surprised at the number and quality of business cards that you collected.

You are excited to start taking advantage of your new client development opportunities. But, you might have done too good of a job with sweet-talking your peers, because you have way too many cards to deal with. As a result, you can’t decide on which opportunity to follow up next.

If you sometimes face this type of decision paralysis, this post is for you. In particular, you will learn how to quickly handle your pile of business cards in order to prioritize them based on your best client development opportunities. For example:

  • How to quickly mark-up cards to preserve their value?

  • The importance of client research files

  • A simple stacking approach for prioritizing client opportunities

  • How to follow-up on these opportunities?

For your convenience, we have organized the below tips based on six simple steps.

Step 1: Card Annotations

As you soon as you get home from your event, you want to capture all of the client development insights that you uncovered at your networking event. For this purpose, go through each of your collected business cards and annotate them as follows:

  • Name and Date of the Event

  • Name of Existing or Target Client (Explanation: Even if the new contact doesn’t work at such a client, they could prove useful information on or connections to such a client. In this case, write the relevant client on the card.)

  • Individual Interests (i.e. did the person reveal any particular interests)

  • Follow-Up Opportunity (i.e. did you discuss any opportunities to follow up with the person)

Step 2: Filter Out Non-Opportunities

If you can’t associate a new contact with a potential opportunity at a target client or existing client, then move his/her card out of the way. You want to save your energy and focus for realistic opportunities.

Step 3: Pull the Research Files

However, if you think that a new contact could help you with getting work from a target client or existing client, then you want to pull (or create) the relevant research file of the target or existing client. If you haven’t created such a file before, you just need a folder for each client. The folder can have subdivisions for various information (e.g. business cards, research notes, etc).

For each new contact, move their card into the appropriate research file.

Step 4: Prioritize the Files

As you want to avoid the problem of pursuing too many opportunities at once, you should order your pulled client files based on the new opportunities. In other words, you should prioritize the files based on two factors:

  • The significance of the target or existing client

  • The opportunity created by the new contact

Place the highest priority files to the top of the pile.

Step 5: Seize the Opportunities

Starting with the first file, follow up with your new contacts as follows.

First, if you already noted a follow-up opportunity on their card, then take advantage of this opportunity. For example, if you discussed meeting for a coffee, invite them for one.

Second, if you wrote down any of their interests, you can follow up by sending some information related to their interests (e.g. a useful article or book title). If they reply with an appreciative note, you might want to invite them for a follow-up opportunity (e.g. coffee).

Third, if you don’t know any of their interests, you should consider doing some research of the new contact (e.g. reading their activity on LinkedIn or talking to your common connections). If you can find a relevant interest, then you can follow up with them by sending some information relating to the interest. Once again, if they send you a positive reply, you might want to invite them for a follow-up opportunity.

Step 6: Have fun

By this point, you should have some nice client development opportunities. Enjoy!

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We hope you find the above tips useful. If you would like to learn more about client development processes, contact us at Evelaw.