Forget Your Business Card? Great Idea!

I usually don’t carry my business card with me to networking events.

Huh? I prefer in a sales or networking environment to get their card instead. I don’t depend on someone to take my card and call me about it in the distant future.

I ask other people to give me their card so I can contact them sooner than later. “Uh, I seem to be out of cards right now. Tell you what, give me your card and I will make sure to follow up with you.” They almost always present a card like it is their first-born child…

Then I follow up with them shortly after we have met to sincerely compliment the card, and ask more about what they do. It is very effective and puts you in control of the relationship and business dealings.

If you are depending on your prospects to call you from just receiving your card, you will be waiting a very, very long time – and going hungry in the meantime.

I love this quote I heard at a conference a few years ago: “Passive sales people have hungry children.”

Your business card can be very effective. So can NOT having it with you at certain times!

Jim Mathis is an international professional speaker and author of the Best-selling Reinvention Made Easy: Change Your Strategy, Change Your Results. To receive his free monthly e-newsletter with articles like this send a SUBSCRIBE message to: subscribe@jimmathis.com.