Business Cards: Ideas For Following Up

By Jim Cunliffe

Networking is a great way of getting yourself in front of a lot of people to talk about what you have to offer each other. Over time, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of everyone you've met and this can lead to missing important opportunities, which undermines all the effort you put in to the networking in the first place. Following up on the meetings them becomes more difficult as you struggle to remember the face that goes with the business card you're looking at, and what was so important about that person. Failing to follow-up effectively is thus the main reason people don't get the full benefit from networking. So how can the problem be avoided?

The key is to manage the information you gather from business cards. Many business people will have collected hundreds of business cards, and keeping in mind which of those are both useful and important can be nigh on impossible if they are not organised in some meaningful way. Here is a simple, but powerful, system for making best use of what can be one of the most useful resources you have, and to make sure you can follow-up on your network meetings effectively:

1. Make notes on the business cards as you collect them. This will really help jog your memory later. What is it about this person that does (or does not) interest you? This is the first phase of your vetting process.

2. As soon as you can, transfer the information from the card to a database of some sort. This can be anything from a CRM system or a spreadsheet, whatever you have, the key is to capture the information on a working system that will remind you of what you have done already, and prompt you for further action if needed.

3. Follow up straight away, making notes on the system as you go. That way you can quickly separate the people worth keeping in touch with, and those you can file away.

4. Have a grading system that lets you monitor your contacts effectively, separating from those you will definitely do business with through to a casual meet who you can't see any reason to stay in touch with.

5. File the business cards in a specific binder. Again segregate the cards in to categories to make them easy to find, and within each category file them logically, e.g. by company name or persons surname. This may seem a little bureaucratic at first, but once your collection of cards starts to grow you'll be glad of a system as you try to track down a card from a meeting you had several months ago (it does happen).

6. Periodically purge your files, both on the screen and from your binder. Over time you will collect cards from people who are just not relevant to your business or life. Be ruthless about removing them from your system, otherwise they will become clutter that makes it harder to focus on the important contacts. When you do periodic follow-ups, such as people who ask you to give them a call in six months, you don't want to be trawling through pages of information that is of no use.

The key is to gather the information rather than the business cards, and be disciplined in the way you act on that information. Following-up is a habit that should be done soon after each networking event, and the results noted and filed for action as required. Once you get in to this habit, business cards move from being clutter in your pockets and desk drawer to being an information resource you can exploit.

Face Media are a graphic design and printing company specialising in flyers and flyer printing. Find out more about flyers at:http://www.facemediagroup.co.uk/?page=business.cards